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BY 
FRANK HARRIS 

Elder Conklin and Other Stories 

MONTES THE MaTADOR 

Unpath'd Waters 
The Veils of Isis 



The Bomb 
Great Days 



The Man Shakespeare 
The Women of Shakespeare 
Shakespeare and His Love (Play) 



Contemporary Portraits 



Love in Youth (in Press) 

Oscar Wilde : His Life and Confessions 

Mr. and Mrs. Daventry (Drama) 



ENGLAND 

OR 

GERMANY 



BY 

FRANK HARRIS 



NEW YORK 

THE WILMARTH PRESS 

835 BROADWAY 
MCMXV 



Copyright, 191 5 

BY 

Frank Harris 



MAY 1919*5 

©aA4U6046 



CONTENTS 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY-? 

Chapter Page 
Foreword 4 

I. Christian Morality and the War 11 

II. The Conflict of Ideals: English and Ger- 
man 22 

III. England's Oligarchy 35 

IV. England's Laws 48 

V. English Justice 64 

VI. The German Nation and Its Ideal 81 

VII. Paris in the First Weeks of War 106 

VIII. The Censorship and Its Effects 132 

IX. Who Will Win in the War? 147 

X. The "Soul of Goodness in Things Evil" 166 

XI. Some Effects of the War upon America 177 



FOREWORD 

Some of the best heads in the world have written 
about this war, and yet no one stands out as having 
approached impartiality. The first half dozen sen- 
tences always show on which side the sympathies of 
the writer are engaged. The Germans all believe 
that they have been attacked: Herr Von Jagow de- 
clares that the plot against them was got up by Eng- 
land; Hauptman is confident that all Germans feel 
they are in the right; Harden asserts that Germany 
is a law to herself. On the other hand, the Allies 
consider Germany as the aggressor: Anatole France 
throws down his pen and enlists at nearly seventy to 
fight the "barbarians"; Wells professes to regard the 
Germans as "inferior" beings; Sir Edward Grey be- 
lieves that they desire "universal domination"; even 
Bernard Shaw appears to have regretted his attempt 
to see things as they really are and agrees that the 
Germans must be crushed. And now comes M. Fa- 
guet, eager to show that a really eminent literary 
critic may also be blinded by prejudice. 

He begins by stating that the Germans are hated 
by all nations, and he infers therefrom that they are 
hateworthy, lacking at least in amiable qualities. 
The inference is plausible, but hardly more. M. Fa- 
guet appears to have no notion of the fact that men 
are apt to hate their superiors just as they like their 
inferiors; in proportion as a man rises above the or- 
dinary he is sure to be disliked. That is the lesson 



FOREWORD 5 

of all genius: Socrates was hated in Athens not be- 
cause he was unamiable, not because he "corrupted 
the youth," as his indictment phrased it; but because 
he was more reasonable, wiser, braver and more 
pious than other men. We mortals crown our great- 
est with thorns. The Germans are hated because 
they have done great things in the last twenty years ; 
they are not only strong in a military sense, but they 
have shown themselves as successful in business as 
in music and philosophy. Their population and 
wealth have grown by leaps and bounds, and, strange 
to say, they have been wise enough at the same time 
to do away with poverty. Much less would have 
sufficed to earn them general dislike, even if their 
manners had been as urbane and distinguished as 
they are reputed to be rude and aggressive. 

Partisans, especially English-speaking partisans, 
are pretty sure to condemn this book of mine as if 
it were written in a spirit of bitter prejudice. There 
is probably an inclination in me to take the weaker 
side, the side of those who have the odds against 
them, for I have often noticed this inclination in 
other Celts; but this tendency, if it exists, is not the 
bias usual among American writers. In self-justifi- 
cation I say that those who would stand upright 
must lean against the prevalent wind in proportion 
to its strength. Of course, one may lean too far and 
lose balance; if I have done that, it is involuntary 
and I shall have to pay for the folly. 

One curious fact has given me a good deal of con- 
fidence. I had practically written this book before I 
came across the "Englische Fragmente" of Heine. I 
was astounded to find that the conclusions to which 
Heine came after visiting England three-quarters of a 
century ago were almost exactly the conclusions 
which had gradually forced themselves in on me and 
I had set down after living and working twenty-five 
years in the country. Now Heine was a Jew, and 



6 FOREWORD 

apt, as most Jews are, to honor success and material 
prosperity such as England possesses, unduly; yet 
Heine condemns English laws and the modern Eng- 
lish ideals as passionately as I do: Jew and Celt ex- 
amining the subject from opposite viewpoints and 
arriving at the same result! 

We both condemn the English oligarchy, English 
snobbishness and English hypocrisy; we were both 
struck with horror by the incredible cruelty with 
which the English treat the poor, and the unimagin- 
able savagery of their laws, mainly directed against 
the weak. It v/as Heine who taught Matthew Ar- 
nold to see the "degradation of the English working 
class," "the ignorance and sordid narrow-mindedness 
of their middle-class,'* and the "barbarianism'* of 
their nobility. Heine left England, he tells us, to get 
away from "gentlemen" and live among ordinary 
knaves and fools as the only man with a clear under- 
standing of human squalor. 

Yet, though I agree with Heine in his condemna- 
tion of much in England, I differ from him in having 
some hope. The vices of the English governing class 
and the savagery of their laws only serve to set in 
relief the fact that such of the working-class as en- 
joy decent conditions of life are among the finest 
specimens of humanity to be met with anywhere. 
There is, so to speak, a well of pure loving-kindness 
about the heart of them which is amazing and a 
sense of humor as well. What shall be said of that 
English soldier who, after an unsuccessful sally 
against the German trenches, called out to his foes: 

"Don't be downhearted, Dutchies; you'll get home 
yet." 

It is my admiration of such Englishmen that lends 
passion to my hope that there may be a social revo- 
lution in Great Britain as an outcome of this war, a 
revolution which will put an end forever to the self- 
ish, senseless domination of the titled class and set 



FOREWORD 7 

free at length the generous humanity of the common 
people. If it be partisanship to plead for this, then 
I am guilty of passionate partisanship ; but not other- 
wise, I believe. In fine, I belong as Victor Hugo 
said he did, to the party of Revolutionary civiliza- 
tion; the party which will control the twentieth cen- 
tury; and out of which must come the United States 
of Europe first, and then the United States of the 
World. 

And in order to hasten the good time and bring 
the dream to consummation we should all try to be 
pitiful to the faults of others and pitiless to our own. 

How conceited, how vainglorious we must be to 
blame this or that nation for causing this world-war, 
without realizing that we ourselves are all compact 
of the very faults which have led inevitably to the 
catastrophe. Greediness, combativeness, vanity, 
cruelty, we have all the vices of the fighter, and our 
faults are manifestly stronger than the correspond- 
ing virtues: self-denial, gentleness and loving kind- 
ness. 

Instead of blaming other men for savage selfish- 
ness, why should we not try to realize how easily the 
war might have been averted if European statesmen 
had consulted their higher natures, and acted to the 
best in them. Austria and Russia have no real rea- 
son to quarrel: Constantinople and Salonica can be 
used by them now as ports for everything except 
making war and the building of warships. Germany 
should long ago have restored the French parts of 
Alsace-Lorraine to France, and so founded peace on 
justice and goodwill. England, too, might have freed 
India and Egypt or confided them to international 
guidance, and could have given South Africa to Ger- 
many as a field of colonization, or if that were too 
high an effort of unselfishness, she might have 
helped Germany to build up a great colony in Cen- 
tral Africa, or the United States might have aided 



8 FOREWORD 

the Kaiser to establish south of the Rio Negro an 
oversea Germany with the consent of the Argentine 
Republic. For surely a German experiment in colo- 
nization would be worth studying and would prob- 
ably serve as a spur to effort throughout the world. 

Such arrangements as these would benefit every- 
one and would be a thousand times more profitable 
than arming ourselves to fight, to say nothing of 
really fighting. 

It is surely impossible to shut one's eyes to the 
fact that it is the two great Germanic peoples, the 
English and the Germans and their striving for the 
first place which brought about the war and is now 
the chief obstacle to a world-peace. Is the Kaiser 
or Mr. Asquith the more humane? Who will first 
hold out his hand? If either of them went to coun- 
sel with his own soul, or even with the lowest self- 
interest he would see that the first to propose peace 
would thereby show himself the wiser. I cannot be- 
lieve that Mr. Asquith has much sympathy with the 
land-greed which has driven the English oligarchy 
in our day to annex Burma and Egypt and make 
war on the South African republics when already in 
Canada and Australia the English have larger pos- 
sessions than they know how to use. For genera- 
tions England fights and intrigues to prevent Russia 
getting to Constantinople; now she gives up her tra- 
ditional policy in this respect. Yet stupid as that 
policy was, it was not so stupid as the belated at- 
tempt to stay the expansion of Germany. 

And Germany in fighting England and France, is 
only helping to make Russia the Master of Europe. 
The hate-policy of England and Germany from every 
point of view is worse than idiotic. 

In this conflict France has shown herself less ea- 
ger for war than any of the other countries, though 
she has the best reason, or at any rate the most ob- 
vious and avowable reason, for engaging in it To- 



FOREWORD 9 

day, too, France would make peace on more reason- 
able terms than any of the other nations, though she 
is as confident as any of them in her strength and 
ultimate victory. 

The truth is that in France the sense of justice is 
more active than in any other country in the world. 
Thanks to this sense and to the consequent parti- 
tion of land in the Revolution, there is hardly any 
poverty in France, and wealth is more widely dif- 
fused there than elsewhere. On the other hand, 
France does more for art and artists and the "intel- 
lectuals" generally than any country except Ger- 
many, and if she prefers a measure of well-being and 
happiness to large families and energetic growth, 
who shall blame her? It is this "sagesse" which one 
admires in the French. Everyone loves France be- 
cause her follies even are generous, and more than 
any other people the French cherish the humane 
ideal. 

And Russia? Whichever side wins, whatever hap- 
pens, Russia is almost sure to profit in a material 
sense through the war; but it is the Tsar and his 
counsellors who are fighting and not Russia; Russia 
as yet is without national policy or purpose; the brain 
and the heart of her not geared properly to direct 
the huge body. Thirty years ago I wrote that 
sooner or later Russia would express herself in a 
new birth in religion or a new form of society. It 
is perhaps the mission of Russia, Holy Russia as 
her children call her, to found the United States of 
Europe. 



Shortly before the war, Mr. H. G. Wells, in 
his book entitled "Social Forces in England 
and America," wrote as follows: 

*'We in Great Britain are now intensely jealous 
of Germany. We are intensely jealous of Ger- 
many not only because the Germans outnumber 
us, and have a much larger and more diversified 
country than ours, and lie in the very heart and 
body of Europe, but because in the last hundred 
years, while we have fed on platitudes and vanity, 
they have had the energy and humility to develop 
a splendid system of national education, to toil at 
science and art and literature, to develop social 
organization, to master and better our methods of 
business and industry, and to clamber above us in 
the scale of civilization. This has humiliated and 
irritated rather than chastened us." Mr. Wells 
informed us further that one must learn German 
''if one would be abreast of scientific knowledge 
and philosophical thought, or see many good plays 
or understand the contemporary mind." 

Since the commencement of the war, Mr. Wells 
has changed his tune. He now says : 

"That trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of 
Europe that has arrested civilization for forty 
years, German imperialism and German militar- 
ism, has struck its inevitable blow" 



10 



England or Germany 

? 

CHAPTER I 

Christian Morality and the War 

For Christian nations waging war with each 
other to talk of morality is mere hypocrisy. 
This war is a proof, if proof were needed, of the 
bankruptcy of Christian morals and of the weak 
hold the unselfish teaching of Jesus has on 
the modern world. Science, with its "struggle 
for existence" and "survival of the fittest" ; sci- 
ence, which has reinforced Paganism with its 
Nietzschean ideal, is the inspirer of the present 
struggle. Yet so strong is habit and so pro- 
found the influence of the Gospel that the first 
weeks of the war were filled with discussions 
as to the moral guilt or innocence of the various 
nations engaged — such mouth-honor, at least, 
was paid to the higher law. 

It seems to me almost a waste of time to at- 
tempt to apportion moral responsibility for 
what even the German Crown Prince, in an 
interview at the end of November, 19 14, called 

II 



12 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

"the most stupid, senseless and unnecessary 
war of modern times." 

Yet something must be said on the matter, 
for the American bias in favor of the Allies is 
continually being used as a proof that right is 
on that side. In a recent speech. Lord 
Bryce, whilom British Ambassador in Wash- 
ington, asserted that the sympathy of the 
Americans for the cause of the Allies was 
a sympathy based on moral grounds and there- 
fore doubly valuable. Of course, fair-minded 
people knew that American sympathy had no 
such foundation, but was in reality an unrea- 
soned prepossession due mainly to the fact that 
Americans and Britons speak the same tongue. 
The tie of speech has once more proved itself 
"light as air and binding as iron," stronger even 
than any bond of blood or intimacy of inter- 
course. Russian Jews are all praying and 
fighting for "Holy Russia"; on the other side 
of an imaginary line, equally pious Jews are 
passionately fighting for the "Vaterland," while 
the Belgian and French Jews pray and fight in 
order that France may win and Germany be 
dismembered. The tie of language is stronger 
than that of race, even when the racial tie is 
backed by religion, secular life in a Ghetto 
and immemorial customs. It is the most dur- 
able of all bonds between men. And in this 
war the great bond of language which always 
tends to assimilate American opinion to Brit- 
ish opinion is still further strengthened in many 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 13 

ways. American papers share the expense of 
getting news with London papers and use Brit- 
ish correspondents as freely as American. The 
chief New York journals, like all London jour- 
nals, belong to the capitalist class, and are di- 
rected by the same self-interest. And last but 
not least, whenever an American paper pub- 
lishes an article greatly in favor of the Allies, it 
can reckon that the article will be reproduced 
in the English press and praised beyond meas- 
ure. The effect of such genial eulogy on writers 
and editors is prodigious. The great financial 
institutions, too, and the principal banks in 
New York and London are intimately allied 
and are accustomed to act in concert. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that Ameri- 
can opinion, particularly at the outset, should 
have been captured by British arguments and 
dominated by British sympathies. 

But already one sees a gradual swinging 
round of American feeling in favor of Ger- 
many, chiefly because Americans admire effi- 
ciency above all things, and it will not be long 
before the assertion of Lord Bryce will be seen 
here to be a piece of special pleading, an as- 
sumption, indeed, out of all relation to fact. 

Mr. Bernard Shaw has already made fun of 
the British "bulldog breed" trying to masquer- 
ade as "meek gazelles"; "incorrigibly com- 
bative and snobbish," he calls the British aris- 
tocratic caste and condemns British diplomacy 
for taking sides with the Russian autocracy 



14 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

against the German people. It is clear to him, 
as to every impartial mind, that that is one 
meaning of this war. 

I must confess that at the outbreak of the 
war I cherished a certain confidence in Sir 
Edward Grey and the violation of the neutral- 
ity of Belgium by the Germans inclined me to 
the side of the Allies and made me regard the 
Germans as the aggressors. 

The publication of the British "White 
Papers" cleverly edited as the book was, proved 
that the violation of the neutrality of Belgium 
had nothing to do with the resolve of Great 
Britain to support France. When this became 
clear to me I resented the pretences of Sir Ed- 
ward Grey, whom I had hitherto trusted. The 
following despatch in the British "White 
Papers" is conclusive on this point, and most 
informative besides, to one familiar with the 
reticence of official England : 

"Sir Edward Grey to Sir E. Goschen. Lon- 
don Foreign Office, August i, 191 4. 

"Sir: I told the German Ambassador to-day 
that the reply of the German Government with 
regard to the neutrality of Belgium was a mat- 
ter of very great regret, because the neutrality 
of Belgium affected feeling in this country. 
. . . He asked me whether, if Germany gave a 
promise liot to violate Belgian neutrality, we 
would engage to remain neutral. I replied that 
I could not say that : our hands were still free 
and we were considering what our attitude 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 15 

should be. . . . The Ambassador pressed me 
as to whether I could not formulate conditions 
on which we would remain neutral. He even 
suggested that the integrity of France and her 
colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I 
felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to 
remain neutral . . . and I could only say that 
we must keep our hands free." 

Now, if one reads that despatch of Sir Ed- 
ward Grey carefully, one sees that he was sur- 
prised by the lengths to which Germany was 
willing to go in order to avoid complicating 
the struggle with Russia, by a war also with 
France and Britain. So far from being arro- 
gant or overbearing, the German ambassador 
"even" suggested that the neutrality of France 
and her colonies might be guaranteed and 
"pressed me as to whether I could not formu- 
late conditions on which we would remain 
neutral." 

Germany thereby said to England in effect— 
"tell us how to insure your neutrality ; we shall 
accept your conditions if possible." Britain, 
by the mouth of Sir Edward Grey, "refused 
definitely to remain neutral" on any conditions. 
The violation of the neutrality of Belgium had 
nothing whatever to do with the decision of 
Great Britain. Sir Edward Grey himself ad- 
mits that categorically. 

All European nations are much on the same 
level when it comes to respecting promises or 
treaties. Russia violated the treaty of Paris; 



i6 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Austria tore up the Treaty of Berlin without 
even an apology. England pledged herself not 
to interfere in the internal affairs of the Trans- 
vaal and her promises to evacuate Egypt were 
so numerous that they excited derision. 

The French have attempted to prove, in a 
Second Yellow Book, that the German Kaiser 
v/as turned into an advocate of war by the 
Agadir incident, which he is said to have con- 
sidered as a defeat for German diplomacy, and 
that the French from the beginning to the end 
were lambs forced to defend themselves against 
German wolves. Much as I love France and 
greatly as I admire the French, I cannot ac- 
cept this view. It becomes necessary to tell 
the truth about that occurrence. 

At the time of the Agadir affair, M. Caillaux 
was Premier of France and intensely patriotic 
and high-spirited. He admitted to me in con- 
versations (which he allowed me to use ; and I 
did use by publishing the gist of them in a 
London paper) that in igii he offered Great 
Britain, on three several occasions, to break off 
all negotiations with the Germans over Agadir 
if Sir Edward Grey would promise to support 
France with arms. "We were eager to fight," 
he declared boldly, and continued : 

"Sir Edward Grey told M. Cambon again 
and again that Great Britain would support 
France if France were attacked, or indeed, if 
France could keep public opinion on her side. 
He laid great stress," said M. Caillaux, "on 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 17 

this point which seemed to me insignificant; 
but parliamentary diplomacy, I suppose, tied 
his hands. Of course, I could not act without 
a definite and unconditional promise of sup- 
port." 

That is, Sir Edward Grey in 191 1, as in 191 4, 
was more than willing to fight; but wanted to 
have public opinion on his side; "to keep up 
appearances" at all costs. And France when 
backed by Russia and England was eager for 
the conflict. 

But if it is clear, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has 
shown, that Sir Edward Grey could have main- 
tained peace in 191 4 by simply telling Russia 
he would not support her if she mobilized, 
surely it is equally clear that the German Em- 
peror might have kept the peace if he had 
agreed to Sir Edward Grey's proposal to sub- 
mit the Austro-Servian dispute to arbitration. 
Indeed, in some respects, German diplomacy is 
the most difficult to defend in the whole im- 
broglio. Here is the position. In the last 
twenty years Germany has grown in popula- 
tion, in wealth and in power, in the most ex- 
traordinary way. While the French popula- 
tion has been stationary, the German popula- 
tion has increased from forty-five millions to 
over seventy millions. If Germany had only 
kept the peace for twenty years more she would 
have had ninety millions of people and France 
would have been hopelessly dwarfed. It was 
Germany's cue not to be drawn into a quarrel ; 



i8 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

every year was increasing her relative power 
and strengthening, too, her vital contention 
that a nation growing in this way must not be 
cribbed and coffined in a small country no 
larger than France. Peace and diplomatic ne- 
gotiations were Germany's game; but Ger- 
many, too, was eager to draw the sword and 
submit the decision to force. 

The truth is, all the peoples engaged in this 
war are almost equally to blame. Behind all 
the moral pretenses there was hard national 
selfishness. Russia was determined to support 
Servia and thus add to its already immense ter- 
ritory by forcing its way to Constantinople and 
the Mediterranean; the Germans, hemmed in 
on all sides, as in a straight waistcoat, felt 
compelled to find an outlet to the sea and colo- 
nies which they might fill with men of their 
own blood ; France was eager for revenge and 
resolved to win back Alsace-Lorraine; and 
England — 

Why was Sir Edward Grey so determined 
not to remain neutral under any circumstances, 
so resolved to take up arms against Germany 
in August, 191 4, when Germany had to defend 
herself against both Russia and France? No 
one who has followed British policy in the past 
can remain for a moment in doubt! British 
policy has often been admired just because it 
has had only one object, self-interest. 

Long ago, Ranke showed that it has always 
been a matter of vital importance for Great 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 19 

Britain to keep command of the seas. For that 
reason she waged war against Spain and broke 
the power of the Invincible Armada. A little 
later, she defeated Protestant Holland, and 
half a century afterwards began the great war 
which lasted, with interludes of peace, for more 
than a century and ended with the defeat of 
France as a maritime rival. 

As soon as Germany began to build a navy 
to protect her mercantile marine, the feelings 
of Great Britain towards her underwent a sea- 
change. Up to that moment she had been 
friendly though somewhat annoyed by the as- 
tounding growth of German trade and com- 
merce. Now at once Great Britain resolved to 
build two war ships to each one of Germany's, 
and when she found this costly, she proposed 
to rest on her oars, if Germany would do the 
same and consent thereby always to remain 
vastly inferior in naval strength. 

Again and again, by the mouth of Mr. Win- 
ston Churchill, Great Britain voiced her desire 
to remain mistress of the seas at the smallest 
possible expenditure. When Germany replied 
that she had no aggressive designs but required 
a navy for protection and would not accept dic- 
tation as to its strength. Great Britain began to 
construct a new naval base at Forsyth and sta- 
tioned a fleet in the North Sea. 

One incident occurred which shows the whole 
position in the dry light of unconscious humor. 
It was habitually asserted in England that Ger- 



20 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

man trade was growing because the Germans 
imitated English goods and passed off inferior 
and cheaper articles for the better class pro- 
ductions of Great Britain. On the other hand, 
British consular agents reported that German 
trade was prospering because the German man- 
ufacturers studied foreign markets and were 
more intelligent and better informed than Brit- 
ish manufacturers, and were served besides by 
German travellers who thought nothing of 
learning two or three foreign languages in or- 
der to win clients. But it was more consoling 
to British pride to declare German goods infer- 
ior and cheaper ; and at length Parliament took 
the matter up and in its wisdom decreed that 
all goods brought into Great Britain and her 
colonies should be plainly marked with their 
place of origin. Every effort was made in the 
press to turn the stamp, "made in Germany" 
into a symbol of contempt. But, alas, one soon 
found that the only knives and razors that 
would cut were all stamped with the hateful 
mark, "made in Germany." In every depart- 
ment this trade-mark became a badge of honor, 
and very soon the English manufacturers went 
about crying to have the law repealed. 

Year by year the industries of Germany and 
the over-sea trade of Germany grew as no trade 
had ever grown before, and year by year the 
jealousy of Great Britain kept pace with it. In 
cool blood, before the war, Mr. H. G. Wells ac- 
knowledged and deplored this sordid but nat- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 21 

ural meanness. British journal after journal 
turned from admiration of Germany to envy 
and dislike and the dislike grew quickly to ha- 
tred and loathing. Soon the feeling became 
active, and in spite of Fashoda, Great Britain 
struck up a treaty with France in order that 
she might free her fleets from the Mediterran- 
ean and be able to concentrate them opposite 
the German coast. From that moment on, it 
was only a question of time when Great Brit- 
ain would declare war on Germany. Bernard 
Shaw is absolutely justified when he tears to 
pieces the hypocritical pretence that Great 
Britain is fighting for poor little Belgium or 
treaty rights or even for the balance of power 
in Europe. Living in England he can hardly 
be blamed for not telling the whole truth — 
that Great Britain has taken up arms to crush 
a successful trade rival and for no other reason. 
As soon as war was declared the Times and 
Daily Mail and many other London papers 
threw off the mask and published column after 
column showing how this, that and the other 
department of trade could now be taken from 
the Germans. The facts are too plain to be 
disputed. In private life, for the last ten years, 
Englishmen of the governing class have ad- 
mitted the trade jealousy and its inevitable 
consequences with smiling complacence. 



CHAPTER II 
The Conflict of Ideals: English and German 

Lord Bryce asserts that this war is a conflict 
of the two ideals of England and Germany. 
There is a great deal to be said for his state- 
ment, though he may not be satisfied with the 
scientific definition of it. Let us examine it 
impartially. And, first of all, what is the Eng- 
lish ideal? 

There are two chief ways of looking at Eng- 
land as at all other countries; as she sees her- 
self and as others see her. Mr. Arnold Bennett 
has given us a picture of her as she sees her- 
self, while the poet Heine long ago gave us a 
notev/orthy picture of her as others see her. 
Mr. Arnold Bennett simply asserts that Eng- 
land stands for freedom and free institutions, 
while Germany is under the heel of a frightful 
military despotism which threatens the peace 
of mankind. Mr. Bennett knows no German. 

When I asked Mr. H. G. Wells recently: 
what he knew about Germany that he should 
condemn her so absolutely, he told me that his 
son's tutor had been a German. Sir Edward 
Grey was not ashamed in a speech made so 
late as March 22nd, to declare that "the Ger- 
man ideal is that the Germans are a superior 
people to whom all things are lawful and 
against whom resistance is unlawful." 



22 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 23 

It is impossible to take such ignorant parti- 
sanship seriously. It reminds me of what Doo- 
ley said to Hennessy at the beginning of our 
war with Spain, "I don't have any more use 
for thim Spaniards than what you have, Hin- 
nessey ; I've never known one of 'em." 

It is necessary to know a nation before one 
talks of it; and the better we know men, the 
more disinclined we are to lump a whole peo- 
ple together in eulogy or condemnation. Burke 
declared that it was impossible to frame an 
indictment against a nation. 

Mr. Arnold Bennett appears to be ignorant of 
the fact that of the nations now at war, Ger- 
many is the only one which has practically 
kept the peace without a break for over forty 
years and that Great Britain spends fifty per 
cent more on armaments per year in propor- 
tion to her population than Germany spends. 
Besides, the military caste in Germany has no 
power to be compared with that of the titled 
oligarchy in England. 

The comparison between Britain and Ger- 
many needs to be taken in hand by someone 
who knows both countries and has a desire to 
state the truth, and nothing but the truth. Let 
us weigh, first, the claim of England to stand 
for liberty and all that liberty means. 

In popular esteem the claim rests mainly on 
the fact that Great Britain was the first coun- 
try to free her negro slaves and to give up the 
slave-trade. It was pointed out at the time, 



24 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

that after losing her chief North American col- 
onies, the large profits Britain had been mak- 
ing out of the slave traffic had fallen away to a 
small amount and that by freeing her slaves, 
she only wished to read the United States a 
lesson which would cost them infinitely more 
than it could cost her. Besides, the twenty mil- 
lion pounds sterling set apart to compensate 
the slave-holders was so expended that while 
many got less than a third of what they should 
have received, a minority was rewarded beyond 
reason. Still, in spite of the intrusion of mean 
motives and other drawbacks, the act was a 
great step in advance, and one redounding to 
Britain's credit. But, after all, one cannot live 
forever on the achievements of one's grand- 
fathers; we must ask how England stands to- 
day in regard to freedom. 

For over two centuries, from Luther to Vol- 
taire, the history of Europe was the history of 
the assertion of the individual and the growing 
expansion of individual rights. It was natural 
that England should take the lead in this move- 
ment; for England as an island was protected 
from outside pressure and so the individuals 
forming the English social organism tended to 
fall apart: individualism became the English 
creed. "The Englishman's home" was vaunted 
as "his castle." 

So long as this centrifugal tendency showed 
itself all over Christendom, England stood for 
the highest civilization. She endowed Europe 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 25 

with the modern Parliamentary forms of self- 
government and taught mankind the value of 
freedom and free institutions in which the in- 
dividual could develop all his energies unhin- 
dered. While this ideal was being assimilated, 
England was held up to admiration on all 
hands as the model State. 

Moreover, thanks in the main to natural ad- 
vantages, England easily took the lead in the 
modern development of industry; she founded 
the factory system and for a half a century or 
more was in the van of the world's industrial 
and commercial progress. 

Just as the individual judgment so bepraised 
by Luther, ended in the scepticism of Voltaire, 
so this unrestrained individualism within the 
state led directly to anarchy, and came to an 
end in the French Revolution. In 1793 the 
French tried to limit the rights of the individ- 
ual by an appeal to equality and the welfare 
of the whole body politic. In economics the 
theory of individualism was then opposed by 
socialism; the interests of the individual had 
to be limited by the interests of the many. In 
chemistry, about the same time the atomic the- 
ory was merged in the molecular theory and 
analytic chemistry having been pushed as far 
as possible was superseded by synthetic chem- 
istry. 

The progress of humanity is rather like that 
of a skater on the outside edge : as soon as the 
rhythmic curve of movement takes the skater 



26 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

away from the line of progress forward, the 
swing to the opposite side is already outlined. 

The French Revolution marks the end of 
the centrifugal movement: a centralizing and 
centripetal movement then took its place. 

The antagonism of the two forces was prob- 
ably more clearly defined in the Civil War in 
America than anywhere else. And though the 
United States are freer from outside pressure 
than England herself, more in love therefore 
with outrageous individualism than England, 
still the idea of the nation, the claims of the 
whole body politic proved themselves even here 
stronger than the rights of the individual or 
even the rights of any state. 

This same centripetal force, or centralizing 
tendency showed itself all through the nine- 
teenth century and from one end of Europe to 
the other in a growth of national feeling. Pied- 
mont drew the Italian states together and Italy 
was "rediviva" ; in the same way Prussia drew 
the German states together and hammered 
them into one on the anvil of war; giant Rus- 
sia began to tingle with the new spirit and the 
freeing of her serfs was the thrill of her nation- 
hood becoming conscious from Petrograd to 
Vladivostock ; even England began to dream 
of a Greater Britain. 

It was inevitable that Germany ("pinched in 
on all sides by enemies" as Bismarck said) 
should become the chief exponent of this cen- 
tralizing tendency, this intensification of na- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 27 

tional feeling and the national ideal. England 
as an island naturally stood for individual free- 
dom ; in economics for Free Trade, for the ideal 
of the "all-round" perfect man; whereas Ger- 
many ringed about by foes was compelled to 
stand for the idea of the whole, in economics 
for socialism, for the ideal of the ''all-round" 
perfect state. 

Towards the end of the nineteenth century 
this national movement was quickened chiefly 
through the extraordinary growth of Russia 
and the United States of America. It was seen 
that World Empires of enormous area and pop- 
ulation were coming into being which must 
dwarf nations as nations had dwarfed clans and 
village communities— and these Empires were 
held together by language and not by race, 
the centralizing tendency growing steadily 
stronger. 

Manifestly, Great Britain was called to unite 
with her colonies and form a confederation of 
British States and so enter this larger compe- 
tition. But this new movement did not appeal 
to England strongly; or rather did not appeal 
to her governing class, the land-owning oli- 
garchy which directs her destinies. She hung 
back hesitating and postponing though her col- 
onies gave her every possible encouragement. 
Meanwhile, Germany, helped by the pressure 
of the surrounding nations upon her, became 
more and more the exponent of centralizing 
force and took the lead. 



28 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

In every respect to-day Germany represents 
the ideal of a nation as perfectly as England 
ever represented the ideal of a perfect individ- 
ual. Let us now consider these two ideals a 
little more closely, for it is manifest that in 
themselves they are both worthy and must ul- 
timately be reconciled and harmonized. 

It is a curious fact that these two great op- 
posing movements in politics have led to in- 
finite confusion of thought and unnecessary 
friction. The assertion of the individual has 
been spoken of as liberty, whereas in fact when 
pushed to an extreme it leads directly to the 
enslavement of all the weaker individuals in 
the state who are subjugated by the few strong. 
This is the "open secret" first seen by Goethe 
which Carlyle was never tired of preaching; 
Coleridge, too, wrote of those who "wear the 
name of Freedom graven on a heavier chain." 

Early in the nineteenth century it was seen 
that in order to make freedom for the many 
possible, the few strong must be restrained; a 
certain equality must be maintained by law or 
there could be no liberty. Again and again in 
the last twenty years, the United States has 
been forced to restrain competition by the In- 
ter-States Commerce Act and other laws in the 
interests of justice. In Great Britain there is 
not equality enough for the many to be really 
free. What freedom can there be when one- 
third of the people is always, as Mr. Booth has 
proved of the British, on the verge of starva- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 29 

tion ; and when one man in every four is buried 
in a pauper's grave? 

Lincoln declared that the principle that no 
one was good enough to govern another against 
that other's will was the sheet-anchor of free- 
dom. Yet Britain boasts of her freedom while 
keeping three hundred odd millions in thrall in 
India and millions more in Egypt. 

For a long time now, the United States and 
all the British colonies have enjoyed manhood 
suffrage. France, too, and Italy; Spain and 
Portugal, Norway and Sweden and even Ger- 
many have constitutions similarly broad-based 
on the will of the whole people, while Great 
Britain still maintains a restricted property 
suffrage and denies the Irish the elementary 
rights of free men. It is plain on the surface 
that England's claim to stand for freedom in 
this twentieth century cannot for a moment be 
maintained. 

The further we probe, indeed, the more pre- 
posterous the claim appears. Great Britain has 
used the idea of individual freedom mainly in 
the interests of her oligarchy to degrade the 
bulk of her population. In his book on "En- 
vironment and Moral Progress" the great 
scientist Alfred Russell Wallace formulated the 
most tremendous indictment of Great Britain 
and her "hypocritical lack of national morality." 
This impartial observer declared that "the re- 
sponsibility of Parliament is criminal; it has 
deliberately placed money-making above hu- 



30 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

man life and human well-being. . . . Most of 
our towns have been allowed to develop into 
veritable death-traps for the poor." With good 
reason he complained that the orders from the 
Home Office to protect the women broken in 
dangerous trades were cynically set at defiance 
by the employers ; "who has murdered the hun- 
dred thousand children of the poor?" he cries, 
"who die annually before they are one year 
old?" and he summed up — "the conditions of 
labor in Great Britain are a disgrace to civiliza- 
tion." 

Let me add one instance to show that Great 
Britain is not only not in the van of human 
progress in this matter of care for the individ- 
ual ; 'but lags behind all other European na- 
tions: Dock laborers are notoriously among 
the lowest and worst-paid of casual workmen ; 
the conditions of their employment are of nec- 
essity, fluctuating. In Hamburg these laborers 
must be employed by the week; in Antwerp 
they can be employed by the day; in London, 
alone of European cities, they can be hired by 
the hour— this one fact proves that the wage- 
slave is degraded in England below the level of 
the negro-slave. Great Britain is among the 
least free of modern nations. Her chief titles 
to esteem belong to the past. 

Let us now glance at the respective success 
of England and Germany in the struggle for 
existence, and particularly in the industrial 
field, in order to win some light on the future. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 31 

There's a common English proverb which 
warns one against the dangers attending pros- 
perity :— "few men can stand beans". The Brit- 
ish have had a long run of mercantile success 
and though they can see the results of material 
prosperity very clearly in the overweening con- 
ceit of the Germans they are unable apparently 
to recognize similar effects in themselves. Yet 
the success of Great Britain is due, one would 
say, almost as much to position and chance as 
to merit ; an island placed between the civilized 
nations and the new world, on the road every- 
where, so to speak, for the sea is the cheapest 
and best of roads, needing no repairs. Besides, 
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
which has been called the age of steam. Great 
Britain had great coal-fields and beds of iron 
ore, both close together and both near the sea 
or on the coast. With these unparalleled ad- 
vantages it is little wonder that Great Britain 
outstripped all competitors, developed industry 
after industry, established an extraordinary 
trade and commerce and made London the first 
port and the banking centre of the world. 

The very evils of English laws seemed at 
first to benefit her. The unjust advantages ac- 
corded by the law of primogeniture to the eld- 
est son drove out the younger children of her 
great families to her colonies and dependen- 
cies, and the barbarous severity of her bank- 
ruptcy and poor laws insured a steady stream 
of emigrants from the industrial classes. 



32 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Accordingly almost without conscious ef- 
fort she founded and developed great colonies 
of her own children who not only purchased 
her manufactures in times of peace, but in war 
were eager to fight and die for the land which 
had treated them as the harshest of step- 
mothers. 

From the beginning, these colonies, yielding 
to the spirit of the age, took the form of demo- 
cratic republics. They never dreamed of trans- 
planting into the new lands the feudal aristoc- 
racy which has made of Great Britain an oli- 
garchy with all the worst vices of despotic rule. 

Naturally enough, the colonists took with 
them English laws ; but they immediately mod- 
ified their harsher provisions and mitigated in 
all directions the barbarities of the English 
penal code. The consequence is that life in 
Canada, Australia or New Zealand is almost 
as democratic as it is in the United States of 
America, showing an equal love of individual 
freedom and of equality before the law, tem- 
pered with a kindliness to the weak and unfit in 
the struggle for existence which is unknown in 
the Motherland. 

For nearly a century Great Britain held an 
undisputed premiership in trade and commerce ; 
and became not only the richest nation in the 
world, but probably the most powerful, with 
the hegemony of the seas for her heritage. 

It is true that the United States, growing 
rapidly in population and wealth, began soon 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 33 

after the Civil War to show herself as a dan- 
gerous competitor in certain fields ; but the suc- 
cess of a people of the same race only increased 
the vainglorious self-esteem of the British. 
The trade advantages given them by their in- 
sular position, the natural advantages of their 
coal and iron beds, were all left out of the ac- 
count. Up to the mid- Victorian time they 
thought and spoke of themselves habitually as 
the only capable business people in the world, 
and fondly imagined that no other race was 
their equal as colonizers. 

In the last quarter of a century the Germans, 
cherishing the national ideal and believing that 
all the spiritual and physical powers of their 
people should be developed, have shown them- 
selves abler organizers and business men than 
the English. Without any advantages of posi- 
tion or natural wealth, simply by knowledge 
and energy, they have built up great industries, 
an extraordinary trade and a vast oversea com- 
merce. With a far larger birth-rate than the 
English, they have been able to absorb and use 
all their people; the growth of population has 
in consequence been far quicker than that of 
England. Nearly two hundred thousand Eng- 
lishmen still leave England every year; while 
emigration out of Germany has ceased. In- 
stead, about half a million of foreigners flock 
into Germany each year and its population in- 
creases at the rate of over a million per an- 
num. In a country no larger than France and 



34 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

not nearly so rich by nature, they have crowded 
seventy millions of people as against forty mil- 
lions of Frenchmen. "Where good laws are," 
said Benjamin Franklin, "much people flock." 

A few examples may here be given to show 
the growth of German industries ; they are typ- 
ical of a hundred branches of trade. Twenty- 
five years ago the English produced twice as 
much steel as Germany; in 1913 Germany pro- 
duced three times as much steel as Great 
Britain. 

For generations, English sporting shotguns 
had been regarded all over the world as the 
best. Forty years ago, the sportsmen who 
came together to compete for the great pigeon- 
shooting prizes at Monte Carlo were all 
equipped with English weapons. About twenty 
years later, however, it became known that bar- 
rels of Krupp steel were superior to English 
barrels. First one sportsman and then another 
bowed to German superiority. Now, in the 
catalogues of British firms, you find the an- 
nouncement: "barrels of Krupp steel can be 
supplied for £10 extra." 

The fine dental instruments, too, which were 
formerly all made in the United States are now 
"made in Germany." In the last twenty years 
of the race for wealth, Germany has outstripped 
all her rivals. 

In this conflict of ideals, it looks as if the 
English ideal belonged to the past while the 
German ideal holds the future. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 35 

In order to decide which ideal is the higher, 
let us see how the account stands between the 
two peoples in the broad field of politics to-day. 



CHAPTER III 

England's Oligarchy 

"Let art and learning, trade and commerce die ; 
But keep, oh keep our old nobility." 

— Lord Henry Manners. 

Macaulay says that "of all aristocracies the 
English is the most democratic, and of all dem- 
ocracies the English is the most aristocratic." 
The statement sounds nobly ; but is not so clear 
as might be desired, and appears to be curiously 
inaccurate. Macaulay apparently means that 
the English aristocracy is recruited more 
largely from the untitled classes than any other 
aristocracy and that the English democracy is 
more snobbish than any other. 

There are not half-a-dozen nobles in Great 
Britain (I do not believe there is even one) 
whose son could show the stainless thirty-two 
quarterings needed in order to obtain admit- 
tance to the Borussen Student Corps at the 
University of Bonn. Yet the British nobility, 
thanks to the right of primogeniture, is far 
more powerful and privileged and far further 
removed from the ordinary life of men than the 



36 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

German nobility : the rarer the honor, the more 
it is esteemed. 

It usually takes a generation or two to rise 
from the ranks to the British Peerage ; for the 
next two or three generations, as a rule, the 
new family keeps its pride of place, and then 
in another generation or so, drops out of sight 
again because the title is only carried on 
through the male line. 

More than half the present House of Lords 
is of creation later than 1814; but the accumu- 
lation of land, money and titles on the eldest 
son alone makes it easy to understand why the 
British House of Lords is the most intensely 
aristocratic assembly in the world, and the 
British nobility the wealthiest and proudest of 
castes. 

When we take into account the unique priv- 
ileges and wealth conferred by primogeniture, 
a little study of the classes from which this 
aristocracy is recruited will make its extraor- 
dinary position and power clear to us. The 
whole caste is founded on wealth. Judges and 
successful soldiers are usually made into peers ; 
brewers, bankers, manufacturers, all multi- 
millionaires, indeed, save company-promoters 
and financial sharks, are encouraged to buy from 
the political party they prefer the dignity they 
desire. The price of the Barony or Earldom 
they want is known and quoted. It depends 
to some slight extent on the character of the 
would-be purchaser ; but a few thousands more 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 37 

makes everything easy. The common nick- 
name "The Beerage'* shows of what elements 
the British Peerage is made up. The "nouveaux 
riches" (the new rich) are at once more snob- 
bish and more greedy than the hereditary no- 
bility. As soon as your "Beer" magnate gets 
into the Upper House, he becomes more con- 
servative than the Conservatives, with a super- 
added contempt for the workmen whom he has 
exploited, which is not found in the ordinary 
aristocrat. The British aristocracy is recruited 
from people who have not only the snobbery 
and pride of an hereditary nobility, but also 
capitalist prejudices to boot. 

The best feature in an aristocracy which, like 
the British, is also the great land-owning class, 
is a certain sense of feudal duty and generosity 
to their farmers and dependents. And, in fact, 
this feudal relationship of Lord to vassal is 
sometimes seen on English estates, though it 
is growing rare; but the "nouveaux riches" 
have none of this patriarchal feeling. They 
have all the vices of the aristocracy intensified, 
with none of the careless kindliness of those 
who have always considered themselves as 
benefactors to their dependents and by their 
position and wealth have been shielded from 
rude contact with realities. 

On the other hand, the "nouveaux riches" do 
as a rule know that riches must be bought and 
paid for with strenuous effort; they have the 
understanding of individual force, and are sup- 



38 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

posed to represent it ; consequently, they exert 
a great influence on the hereditary peers, but an 
influence that is usually both sordid and harsh. 

It is undoubtedly the German paste in the 
English character which is responsible for the 
maintenance of this hereditary nobility, and 
for the aristocratic color of all English society. 
The ordinary German, like the Englishman, is 
docile and submissive to his social superiors; 
but because of the wealth of the aristocracy 
and the Englishman's veneration of money, the 
British nobility stands infinitely higher than the 
German, or indeed any other noble caste. A 
German would sneer if told, as an Englishman 
is told, to order himself "lowly and reverently 
to his betters" and to pray to be allowed to 
exist "in that state of life into which it has 
pleased God to call him." I quote the words 
of the English Church Catechism because if I 
coined them, I should be told that I was exag- 
gerating the snobbish subservience of the 
people. 

The Celts, on the other hand, whether in Ire- 
land, Wales or the Highlands of Scotland, are 
notoriously independent and wilful; they are 
inclined to stand for their rights as men and 
consider themselves the equal of all other feath- 
erless bipeds. This Celtic fringe is in continual 
opposition on almost all subjects, political and 
social, to the Anglo-Saxon majority. In poli- 
tics its influence is a liberating one and makes 
for equality and justice, and in social affairs it 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 39 

does something to mitigate that unbounded 
reverence for rank which is a characteristic of 
all the Germanic peoples. 

But in Germany real forces, the chief of 
which are poverty and the necessity of earning 
a living, work steadily against the dominance of 
aristocratic pride on the one hand and the ser- 
vility of the lower classes on the other. A no- 
ble in Germany has nothing like the position 
he has in Great Britain; first of all, the high 
born are numerous, and what is more im- 
portant, the vast majority of them are poor 
and have to work in order to live. Besides, 
there is an immense intellectual middle-class 
in Germany which criticises the nobility from 
the heights of knowledge and, at the same time, 
encourages the working people by insisting on 
the dignity and necessity of labor. It is this 
class which differentiates Germany so com- 
pletely from Great Britain ; it is this class which 
inspires German life with high purpose and 
ideals, and has gradually infected the whole na- 
tion with a triumphant sense of the value of en- 
deavor and the glory of achievement. Para- 
sites, whether of the best class or of the low- 
est, are despised in Germany as only the poor 
are despised in England. 

Mr. Bernard Shaw thinks he is telling the 
truth impartially when he admits that the Brit- 
ish aristocrat is as "snobbish and combative" 
as the Prussian Junker. If he had said ten 
times prouder and more snobbish and far more 



40 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

ignorant, he would still be within the mark. 
He reminds Britons of the so-called "On the 
Knee'* episode when an English officer tried to 
make his men kneel to him ; he reminds us all, 
too, of the floggings in English military pris- 
ons ; but knowing nothing about Germany, and 
apparently nothing about primogeniture, he 
misses the point of the comparison. The Ger- 
man noble is no doubt overbearing and snob- 
bish and combative, but he is usually poor and 
has to work or study or both in order to get a 
living. This necessity keeps him human and in 
close touch with humanity; he becomes effi- 
cient, he learns his work and does it; he is in 
perpetual competition with that intellectual 
middle-class which is the real driving force of 
the nation. His name and title help him a lit- 
tle in the struggle of life; but very little save 
in the army, and even there incessant hard work 
is a tradition and a duty. It is the highly edu- 
cated German of the middle-class who is even 
prouder than the American of efficient work, 
who sets the pace in life and gives the tone. It 
is the German school, the German university, 
even more than the army, which forms the ani- 
mating spirit of the people. 

The German noble regards fighting as his 
business. He is content to work hard as an 
officer for small pay and no one can question 
his zeal, his competence, his self-sacrificing 
courage. His virtues are, at least, as conspic- 
uous as his faults. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 41 

Very few of the English aristocracy do any 
work at all. The few who enter the army, 
choose the Guards or crack cavalry regiments 
and talk of their duties as a nuisance when 
they have to spend even an hour a day on the 
parade ground. The men are taught, not by 
the commissioned officers as in Germany, but 
by the non-commissioned. 

It is notorious that almost all the more capa- 
ble British generals have been drawn from the 
middle classes: — Roberts, Wolseley, Wood, 
Brackenbury, French ; all have won their titles. 

A couple of facts will illustrate the vast 
difference between the British army and the 
German. At the beginning of this war, Great 
Britain could only put two army corps in the 
field. Under 70,000 men were present at Mons 
when already over two millions of German 
soldiers had crossed the frontier; yet the Brit- 
ish army costs more than the German army and 
there are many more generals in the British 
army than there are in the German. 

British apologists attribute the difference in 
cost of the two forces to the fact that theirs is 
a voluntary army, but if all the pay given to 
the soldiers be deducted, the little British army 
is nevertheless more costly than the German. 
The truth is, money is wasted like water in the 
British army ; the pay of all the higher officers 
is enormously larger than it is in any other Eu- 
ropean army and they do infinitely less for 
it. 



42 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

The ideal of the Prussian Junker as an offi- 
cer is a hard, proud, efficient soldier, one who 
lives plainly and is willing at any moment to 
throw his life away. The ideal of the English 
noble is to do as little as possible, to live as 
well as possible and to marry an heiress, even 
an American, rather than live in straitened 
ways. 

Heine saw deeper than Shaw: — "England's 
nobles," he says, "hold themselves far above 
the common ruck of mankind who are com- 
pelled to cling close to the earth; like beings 
of a higher sort they regard little England as a 
comfortable hotel, Italy as their winter-garden, 
Paris as a gay reception-room and the whole 
world as their property. Without care or duty 
or effort they are content to live like Gods with 
gold as the talisman to gratify every wildest 
wish." 

Even Heine does not attempt to trace the 
soul-destroying influence of this privileged, 
parasitic, idle class upon all the lower strata 
of society; its ideal is to live magnificently 
without working, and thus, work, thrift, en- 
deavor, indeed all the household virtues, are 
discredited. The public school boy who has to 
work for his living feels that he is thereby rele- 
gated to a lower class. The crowds of young 
Englishmen in all the colonies who are de- 
spised as "remittance men" illustrate the infec- 
tion of aristocratic parasitism. 

"Society is like a fish," says the thinker, "and 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 43 

goes rotten first at the head." But the conta- 
gion spreads rapidly, and, indeed, inevitably. 
The ideal of the manhood of Great Britain is 
not labor and achievement, but play and enjoy- 
ment; that is part of the price it pays for its 
noble caste. 

If one attempted to reckon up the whole cost 
of this wealthy hereditary aristocracy, one 
would never have done. That there is any 
health at all, or any manhood in a caste of 
idlers is astonishing and speaks volumes for 
the moral sturdiness and health of the race; 
but the handicap of inherited wealth and posi- 
tion is appalling. Emerson, who was the kind- 
liest and most sympathetic of critics, had to tell 
the English that this institution "lowered the 
dignity of manhood." 

It does infinitely worse than that ; it poisons 
the founts of honor at the source and injects 
a subtle all-pervading venom through all the 
veins of the nation's life. It falsifies all values, 
belittles all virtues, debases all effort. It en- 
feebles the army, corrupts the judiciary, stulti- 
fies the legislature, degrades the church. So 
long as Great Britain preserves this oligarchy 
in its present form, it cannot hope to be among 
the nations which lead the modem world ; this 
one institution handicaps it out of the race. 

Such absolute condemnation may seem ex- 
travagant; of course, too, my criticism is con- 
fined to the class as an institution and its in- 
fluence as a whole. Taken in that way, it is 



44 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

not harsh; but, though the English aristocracy 
is the only class I have ever seen in any coun- 
try which, as an institution, has nothing to be 
said for it, there are members of it who are 
not only charming in manners and intercourse, 
but who are able even to turn the handicap of 
their position and wealth to account. Such 
men are, however, rare exceptions and are not 
numerous enough to leaven the mass. 

For the life of me I cannot recall in the last 
couple of centuries, a single occasion when the 
English aristocracy has contributed an unsel- 
fish thought or the example of a noblfe deed to 
the history of the race. The British House of 
Lords has opposed every reform from Catholic 
and Jewish emancipation to Home Rule for 
Ireland, and has taxed industry indefatigably 
for its own enrichment in a hundred base and 
senseless ways. 

I tried to believe for years that the British 
aristocracy had manners and taste, though the 
manners were but a veneer and the taste was 
shown chiefly in dress and in the pleasures of 
bed and board; but I was gradually forced to 
admit that their detachment from work and de- 
votion to sense-enjoyment had dwarfed and 
stunted their appreciation even of art; it is 
mainly their influence that tends to degrade the 
artist in England to the level of the public en- 
tertainer as a sort of acrobat or mime. Lord 
Southampton evidently thought it a privilege 
of his position, if not a duty, to place Shake- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 45 

speare beyond the reach of want ; but the mod- 
ern leaders of fashion in England would not 
even know the name of a Davidson or a Mid- 
dleton and would laugh anyone to scorn who 
told them that they had any interest in a poet's 
well-being. 

One fact will exemplify the influence of 
the aristocracy, their manners and their sense 
of spiritual values beyond dispute. At one of 
my first lunches in London, I remarked a little 
man with snowy hair, blue eyes and healthy 
complexion sitting opposite to me about the 
middle of the table. On the right of the hostess 
was a peer, on the left, a Minister of State, and 
then came ordinary folk. A daughter of the 
house, a peeress like her mother, was at the 
other end of the table and supported on the 
right and left by titled people. Suddenly I 
heard someone speak of the little man opposite 
me as "Mr. Browning." 

"Is that Robert Browning, the poet?" I 
asked in wonder. 

"And did you once see Shelley plain?" 

My neighbor nodded indifferently while I 
gasped with indignation. Fancy putting lord- 
lings and politicians above an immortal like 
Robert Browning ! Such a thing would be un- 
thinkable in any other European country. In 
France, no nobleman could be induced to take 
a seat at a table above a great poet or even a 
Member of the Institute or Academy ; high per- 



46 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

sonal merit confers position in Paris. And in 
Germany, one still recalls Frederick the Great's 
reproof to his Lord Chamberlain when he 
placed Voltaire at another table. 

"Great intellects rank with sovereigns," he 
said; "put M. Voltaire on my right." 

I shrink from depicting the influence of the 
English aristocracy on morals or religion. I 
dislike painting with shadows and heavy blacks. 
It should be sufficient to consider the speech 
they affect, and from that one example who- 
ever cares may safely calculate the effect of the 
aristocratic attitude in all the higher fields of 
human endeavor. 

There are many points of likeness between 
the highest and the lowest classes in England; 
but none more curious than their misuse of 
language. The poor are so ignorant and so in- 
articulate by nature that two or three hundred 
words suffice to express all their ideas. Their 
speech is chiefly made up of "expletives" se- 
lected to shock and prized in proportion to 
their obscenity. The "Smart Set," too, have a 
vocabulary usually limited to two or three hun- 
dred words and made up chiefly of adjectives 
selected as shibboleths and used because no one 
outside the charmed circle would think of giv- 
ing them the same significance. 

For instance, one season "useful" was em- 
ployed as an epithet of highest praise in meas- 
uring everything. "She's 'useful' as a dancer; 
he's 'useful' at drinking" or "lowering 'em 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 47 

down." Another season, "high-stepping" was 
adopted as a synonym for "fast" or "loose." 
"She's a 'high-stepper/ don't you know," had a 
huge success. As soon as the middle-classes 
begin to use the same epithet, it is discontinued 
by those who wish to be smart. 

Innumerable comedies have made sport of 
their affected use of the adjective "awful" ; it's 
"awfully" funny; it's "awfully" wet or hot or 
cold or dry or amiable or anything else you 
please in English society. The language is at 
once impoverished and degraded to an extra- 
ordinary degree by both the highest and the 
lowest classes ; by the lowest as a defiant sign 
of their abject condition; by the highest as a 
symbol of snobbish superiority. Which is the 
more poisonous motive may be debated, but 
the fact paints English society in its habit as it 
lives. 

There can be no doubt that the influence of 
the "corner-boy" or "bar-loafer" is extraordi- 
narily like the influence exercised in every de- 
partment of English life by the hereditary no- 
ble. Your Earl Fitz this or Fitz that is almost 
always on the same moral and intellectual level 
as the street-loafer. The child spoiled by lux- 
ury and subservience is curiously like the gut- 
ter-snipe degraded by destitution and misery. 

No picture of the English aristocracy would 
be complete without at least a specimen or two 
of the religious maniac. There is a protestant 
Duke (there are only about a dozen English 



48 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Dukes all told) who is an Irvingite, and be- 
lieves in the "gift of tongues" accorded to Car- 
lyle*s friend, Irving. 

There is another Duke, a devout Catholic, 
who is intensely proud of his name and lineage. 
He married a cousin, mainly, it was said, be- 
cause he thought no other blood blue enough. 
His eldest boy was deformed and anything but 
bright. The father took him to Lourdes again 
and again, bathed him in the holy well and 
prayed over him. Neither prayers nor pilgrim- 
age did any good. The poor little fellow died. 
A few years afterwards the mother died also. 
The Duke evidently did not understand the 
lesson, much less take it to heart, for he has 
since married another cousin. The children of 
this marriage are said to be normal. But what 
can be expected from the offspring of such a 
union? 

And what can be said for a caste that pro- 
duces such men as these among its finest flow- 
ers? 

CHAPTER IV 

England's Laws 

England's laws are still more barbarous 
(grausamer) than her oligarchy. — Heine. 

While one agrees with Montesquieu that one 
can learn more about a nation from its lav/s 
than from all other institutions, it is most im- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 49 

portant not to be led astray by particularities 
which are not characteristic but to consider the 
whole trend and tendency of the legislation. 

If we find certain features of the civil law 
repeated in the criminal law, and supported 
again by well-known customs, it is almost cer- 
tain that these traits are characteristic of the 
people. 

All the supporters of England, from Locke 
and Wordsworth to Sir Edward Grey and Ar- 
nold Bennett, unite in basing her claim to dis- 
tinction on "freedom" — in especial on "free in- 
stitutions" and "free speech." Let us try then 
to see how England stands in regard to liberty. 

"There can be no freedom," says Locke, 
"without free speech." One used to hear con- 
tinually that England was the home of free 
speech; every Englishman, we were told, was 
free to tell the truth as he saw it without fear 
or favor. The boast may have been justified 
in the past before printing was much used and 
when England was compared with continental 
despotisms ; it can hardly be sustained to-day. 
The right of free speech or free writing and 
printing has been limited in Great Britain by 
the most stringent libel laws ever framed. 
They are wittingly founded on what Milton 
called "the blasphemy" that it may be wrong 
to tell the truth. Indeed, British lawyers are 
not ashamed to stand on the epigram — 

"the greater the truth the greater the libel." 



50 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

In the United States there is only one State, 
Massachusetts, in which the truth can be a li- 
bel, and even there juries hesitate to punish the 
teller of the truth. 

The law, of course, should be that if any 
statement is true, the complainant should be 
compelled to prove that it is not for the public 
benefit to publish it, and in all such cases the 
punishment should be light, and never lead to 
imprisonment. In Great Britain it is the teller 
of the truth who is compelled to prove that his 
statement is for the public benefit, and if he 
fails to establish this, he is usually sent to 
prison. Moreover, in cases of publication in a 
newspaper, timely apology and the withdrawal 
of a libelous statement should be regarded as 
sufficient atonment. The British law here is 
ridiculous in its hatred of truth and dislike of 
free speech. In every other trade or profession 
in Christendom, an accident is treated as an 
accident. Even in Great Britain if your motor- 
car runs into another man's car and kills his 
wife and daughter by accident, all he can re- 
cover from you is the cost of the material in- 
jury inflicted on his car, clothes, etc. But if a 
paper happens to libel a man by accident; 
though it apologizes at once, it may, neverthe- 
less, be condemned to pay thousands of pounds 
damages in spite of the fact that no damages 
have been alleged; nay, even if it has been 
proven or expressly admitted that no damages 
whatever have been inflicted. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 51 

One instance of this almost incredible fact 
must suffice. 

In 1908, the weekly journal, "Vanity Fair," 
published an article reflecting on Parr*s bank. 
Shortly afterwards, the journal declared that 
the article had appeared by mistake and pub- 
lished the completest possible apology. When 
the action came on for trial, the representatives 
of Parr's bank were asked whether they could 
trace any damages. They admitted that no 
damage whatever was done. The Judge ex- 
pressly charged the jury that this should not 
prevent them giving exemplary damages if they 
saw fit. Encouraged by this advice, the jury 
brought in a verdict of five thousand pounds 
or twenty-five thousand dollars against the pro- 
prietor of the newspaper. 

The case was taken to the Court of Appeal 
where Lord Justice Moulton and two other 
judges declared that they regarded five thou- 
sands pounds as a very small and reasonable 
amount, and confirmed the verdict. 

Mad unreason could be pushed no further. 
An accident which caused no damage was pun- 
ished vindictively. 

There is much less freedom of speech to-day 
in England than there is in Russia. 

The libel law of Great Britain is a disgrace 
to the lawgivers and judges who have framed 
it and to the people who have accepted it. It 
is drawn up simply to protect the rich and pow- 
erful from any word of criticism, true or false, 



52 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

purposed or accidental, and by itself, is suffi- 
cient to prove that England prefers money to 
both truth and liberty. 

In exactly the same spirit the laws prohibit- 
ing what is known as "obscene libel" are ad- 
ministered. Recently a masterpiece of litera- 
ture, the "Contes Drolatiques" of Balzac, which 
has been translated and published in every Eu- 
ropean country, was tardily rendered into Eng- 
lish. At once it was seized by the police who 
regulate the infamous nightly traffic of Picca- 
dilly. The London magistrate immediately or- 
dered the book to be burned and congratulated 
the police upon discovering what he called "tlie 
blackest plague-spot in London." The joyous 
humorous "Contes Drolatiques" worse than the 
prostitution of Piccadilly Circus; worse than 
the child-traffic of the Mile-End road! British 
justice needs no further exemplification. To 
talk of free speech in such a country would be 
ridiculous, were it not shameful. 

Everyone remembers how Bradlaugh was 
treated for telling the truth and how Mrs. Be- 
sant, a high-minded religious teacher, if ever 
there was one, was punished for publishing 
simple facts of medical science. 

Even the barbarous libel-laws I have de- 
scribed in outline are not sufficient protection 
to the oligarchy. In the past, judges tried to 
protect the administration of justice against 
undue influence or unfair comment by treat- 
ing such comment while a case was pending 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 53 

(sub judice) as "contempt of court" and pun- 
ishing it accordingly either by fine or confine- 
ment or both. This power was used centuries 
ago, to give a defendant fair-play, to protect 
him against the arbitrary power of the Crown. 
It is evident that there is a class of cases which 
should be summarily dealt with in some such 
way. And for centuries these cases were han- 
dled in Great Britain with a certain rough com- 
mon sense. The law was held to be that com- 
ment in the earlier stages of a case would not 
be regarded as influential enough to require 
summary treatment, and if the justice of the 
case could be met by a libel action that was 
the proper way to proceed. But latterly, Eng- 
lish judges of the baser sort have used this 
power deliberately as petty despots. Judge 
Horridge held recently that libelous comment 
on either party in a suit was "contempt of 
court" and though the law declares that in case 
of libel the editor, the printer and the publisher 
are responsible, he added that the Managing 
Director of the Company owning the newspa- 
per could be held responsible though the only 
evidence before him was an affidavit stating 
that the Managing Director had never seen the 
article in question. And he followed up this 
iniquitous decision by incarcerating the unfor- 
tunate Director for contempt of Court. 

The lettres de cachet committing persons to 
the Bastille without form of trial were said to 
have done more to bring about the French 



54 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Revolution than any other single wrong ; these 
infamous "letters" had to be signed by the King 
and the King alone, but in England you have 
a hundred petty despots called judges who can 
and do commit innocent persons to prison 
without form of trial and without any possibil- 
ity of redress. 

This one instance suffices to show how cru- 
elly Mr. Arnold Bennett is mistaken when he 
talks of England as standing for liberty in this 
century. England is the only country in Eu^ 
rope where the innocent are sent to prison 
without trial and kept there in defiance of 
justice. No habeas corpus act can avail the 
guiltless against a judge's fiat, and the length 
of imprisonment is at his discretion. He may 
even override a doctor's affidavit that the im- 
prisonment is damaging the health or endan- 
gering the life of his victim. Your Sir Thomas 
Horridge under these circumstances will not 
hesitate to browbeat and insult the doctor in 
the traditional manner of the infamous 
Jeffries. 

Such committals for "contempt of court'* 
which introduce into the ordinary administra- 
tion of the law all the whimsical idiosyncrasy 
and the savage cruelty and injustice of the 
worst of monarchical despotisms serve to show 
how freedom of speech is hated to-day in Eng- 
land. All these laws and punishments are cun- 
ningly framed in the interests of the rich and 
are intended, as one foreign writer phrased it, 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 55 

to ensure to the public robber the undisturbed 
enjoyment of his "kill." 

But someone will say if free speech has been 
abolished in Great Britain since it has grown 
rich, at least the institutions are free ; there is 
government of the people and by the people if 
not for the people. Ireland may be despoti- 
cally fleeced and flogged, soldiers may be used 
to take the place of workmen out on strike ; but 
this mixture of feudal and capitalistic tyranny 
is approved of by the majority of the people. 
No wilder misconception was ever popularised. 
The other day in New York, Miss Christabel 
Pankhurst in a lecture gaily declared that the 
people governed in Great Britain but in Ger- 
many the Kaiser made war and peace accord- 
ing to his own sweet will. Again and again 
she asserted that there was manhood suffrage 
in Great Britain and not in Germany, though 
every moderately well-informed person knows 
that the exact contrary is the case. Half the 
workmen in Great Britain are disfranchised by 
the so-called "lodger" qualification which pro- 
vides that only those men can vote who pay 
six shillings a week for their lodging and can 
prove six months' continuous occupancy. Be- 
sides, plural voting of the rich is allowed to 
any extent. But even if manhood suffrage were 
introduced to-morrow in Great Britain, there 
would be no freedom possible there while the 
libel laws and the law on debts and debtors are 
what they are and while they are administered 



56 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

by aristocratic judges in the interests of the 
oligarchy. The governing classes in Great 
Britain only extend the vote in measure as they 
see that this can be done without endangering 
their privileges. There will never be the ghost 
of freedom in England till there is a social rev- 
olution. 

The evil springs immediately from the aris- 
tocratic position accorded to the judges and 
officers of justice. Judges in the high court 
get from $25,000 a year to $50,000. They work 
short hours and have four months' holiday in 
the summer. After fifteen years' work, they 
have retiring pensions from $15,000 a year up- 
wards. They are practically appointed for life ; 
it is true they can be removed by the Home 
Secretary; but this power is hardly ever exer- 
cised. Even judges who are notoriously in- 
sane, like the late Mr. Justice Stephen, are al- 
lowed to officiate. Do not let me be told that 
this is a solitary instance. It is well known 
that the present Justice Phillimore has "very 
peculiar" ideas on divorce. He refuses to pro- 
nounce any such decision; "God's laws are 
higher than man's laws," he says ; yet he is still 
continued on the bench because of his eminent 
services. He recently sentenced the writer of 
a letter containing "an implied threat" (the 
words are his own) to twenty years' imprison- 
ment. It is a charity to regard him as irre- 
sponsible. 

If the huge emoluments given to English 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 57 

judges are not sufficient to keep them in per- 
fect sympathy with the governing oligarchy, the 
further corruption of titles is carefully used to 
make them properly subservient. The judge is 
usually made a Knight, but if he shows much 
independence, the honor can be withheld. On 
the other hand, if he is pliable enough, he will 
almost certainly be made a Lord and translated 
to the House of Peers. Yet because it is prac- 
tically impossible to buy a judge for cash he is 
regarded as incorruptible. 

Under these circumstances, it is not surpris- 
ing that the judges in England have again and 
again turned the law into an instrument of ty- 
ranny. It is practically always interpreted 
against the lower classes, who are already al- 
most shut out from any chance of obtaining 
justice by the costliness of the procedure. Re- 
cently these aristocratic judges practically put 
an end to Trade Unions by holding that the 
Union funds couldn't be used to help candi- 
dates in their election expenses. The judges' 
view of the law crippled the Trade Unions com- 
pletely, until they got a new law passed in the 
present parliament which even English judges 
appear unable to misread. 

The cost of going to court is higher in Eng- 
land than in any country in the world. It is 
difficult to recover a small debt without ex- 
pending more money than it is worth. The 
costs in cases of debts under twenty-five dol- 
lars are often larger than the debt; whereas 



58 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

in France or in Germany, such a debt does not 
cost on the average ten per cent to recover. 

The judges of the lower courts are all paid 
extravagantly. A county Court Judge in Eng- 
land receives seventy-five hundred dollars a 
year ; twice as much as the judges of the high- 
est Court of Appeal receive in France or Ger- 
many. From one end of the system to the 
other all care is taken to insure aristocratic 
prejudices in the judges. It is a mere truism to 
say that no justice can be looked for in Eng- 
land by a poor man when any member of the 
titled aristocracy, or indeed any rich man, is 
opposed to him in a case. 

This self-styled land of liberty is the only 
country in Europe where that form of chattel- 
slavery, known as imprisonment for debt, still 
flourishes, and curiously enough, this institu- 
tion throws the most sinister light upon the 
whole administration of law in Great Britain. 
In 1869 the British Parliament passed an Act 
abolishing "Imprisonment for Debt." One pro- 
vision, however, was retained. If the debtor 
was a rich man, it was argued, there ought to 
be some compulsion to force him to pay. Ac- 
cordingly, in case "means" were proved, the 
judges were allowed to send recalcitrant debt- 
ors to prison for not more than six weeks, not 
for debt but for "contempt of court." Under 
this provision some twelve thousand persons 
are annually sent to prison in Great Britain by 
the be-wigged Solons and half of these crimi- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 59 

nals are imprisoned for sums less than twenty- 
five dollars ! 

Evidently, an English judge's ideas of 
"means" are peculiar. 

But even this dreadful miscarriage of justice 
would not paint English judges to the life. 
Under the pretence of making it easier for the 
debtor, but really in order to give him time 
and encouragement to practice blackmail on 
all his female relatives, who pay to avoid stain- 
ing the name with the prison smudge; the 
judges ordered debts of even less than £5 to 
be paid in instalments (though "means" must 
have been proved to their satisfaction.) The 
next step was easy; the debtor is now sent to 
prison for not paying an instalment and so can 
be sent to prison a dozen times for the same 
petty debt. Recently a Colonel in the army 
who had fought and bled for his country, was 
sent to prison for the third time for not paying 
an instalment of a small debt. Though the 
man was starving, "means" were held to have 
been proved. 

The barbarous stupidity of such judgments 
and judges seems to strike no one in England. 
The facts seldom get into the papers and never 
call forth any comment ; they excite no assured 
interest such as attaches to the announcement 
that "Lord and Lady Snooks arrived at Clar- 
idge's Hotel yesterday from their country seat." 

It must always be remembered that nearly 
all the cruelties perpetrated under the heading 



6o ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

"contempt of court" as equivalent to impris- 
onment for debt are directed against the poor 
alone. For debts over $250, bankruptcy pro- 
ceedings can be instituted by either party, and 
so the man who owes large sums is exempted 
from any chance of being imprisoned either 
for debt or contempt of court. The whole pro- 
ceeding is directed against the poor and would 
be farcical were it not tragic. 

In contrast with all other civilized coun- 
tries, English laws have in many respects be- 
come harsher in the last forty or fifty years and 
English judges to-day do worse than ruin men 
for accidents beyond their control. 

So far I have only been treating of the Eng- 
lish civil law and its procedure. I must now 
say a word or two about the criminal law, 
which, as Alfred Russel Wallace writes, "shows 
equal injustice." Here is the considered opin- 
ion of the great scientist: "The dictum of the 
law, that an Englishman should be held to be 
innocent till he is proved to be guilty, is abso- 
lutely reversed in the case of the poor man, 
and he is treated as if he were guilty till, 
against overwhelming odds, he is able to prove 
himself innocent." 

Dr. Wallace is well within the truth. If a 
working man is arrested for stealing, let us say, 
no attempt even is made to free him by provid- 
ing bail (the bail would be fixed at a prepos- 
terous figure) ; he is haled off to prison and his 
family thrown to want. In prison he is treated 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 6i 

in every respect as a criminal ; he has to clean 
out the cells of other prisoners, is pushed and 
ordered about as if he were lower than a dog 
and fed v/orse than most dogs are fed. I re- 
member once visiting a chauffeur in prison : he 
had knocked down a man and injured him one 
dark night. He had been in prison more than 
a month when I saw him. His wife and child 
had been reduced to beggary; he was nearly 
insane with anxiety on their account ; but could 
do nothing for them. He was very inarticulate, 
though capable, careful, honest and well-be- 
haved. If he had been left without a first-rate 
barrister, he would inevitably have been con- 
victed. As it was, the judge treated him as if 
he ought to have been hung because a drunken 
man stepped off the sidewalk at the last min- 
ute in front of his car. Though innocent of all 
offence this man not only lost his job, but was 
confined for two months in prison and treated 
as a criminal. His little home was sold up ; his 
wife and child tortured by semi-starvation : did 
the law compensate him for ruining him and 
putting the prison stain upon him? On the 
contrary, the judge told him it was very lucky 
for him that the jury took so mild a view of 
what he had done. Had the chauffeur not hap- 
pened to enlist the sympathy of a man of means 
he would surely have suffered at least a year's 
imprisonment. As it was, he was merely 
ruined and tortured for being innocent. With 
a clean chauffeur's record for over ten years be- 



62 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

hind him, he could not get work even as driver 
of a motor-cab. The prison had made his 
chance of getting private service impossible. 
He was ultimately compelled to take a place in 
a garage at twenty-five shillings a week as 
helper, though till that time he had never 
earned less than fifty shillings. 

I could give a dozen instances within my 
own knowledge of worse injustice than this 
worked by the ordinary operation of the Eng- 
lish law: Dr. Wallace's condemnation must 
be accepted as a mild statement of the truth. 

And the harshness of the English law and 
English judges towards the poor is sharpened 
to brutality by the inhuman severity of English 
prisons. Fortunately, here I find another un- 
impeachable witness even better-informed than 
Dr. Wallace himself. 

In her book on English Prisons, Lady Con- 
stance Lytton describes the nameless barbari- 
ties practised on female prisoners. She tells 
how she was forcibly fed by a male doctor 
while one nurse sat on her legs and another 
held her arms. When, in spite of this restraint, 
or because of it, she vomited, the doctor slapped 
her face. 

She tells of how another woman prisoner 
slipped and broke her ankle, and was told by 
the doctors that there was nothing the matter 
with her and was forced to walk up and down 
the iron stairs for weeks. On account of this 
savagery, the broken leg shrank, the woman 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 63 

became a cripple, and was unable to support 
her little children. Mr. Winston Churchill as 
Home Secretary had for very shame's sake to 
grant the tortured and maimed creature $2,500 
as compensation, but at the same time he de- 
clared that the prison doctors who had pre- 
tended to examine her three several times, were 
in no wise to blame. 

A couple of further facts will show the in- 
credible meanness and barbarity of the whole 
system. 

Some time ago, the "Daily Chronicle" pub- 
lished a series of articles proving that although 
the necessaries of life were far cheaper in Ger- 
many than in England, the German authorities 
expended twice as much money in feeding their 
prisoners as the English authorities. Semi- 
starvation is a part of the prison regime in 
England. 

Recently the whole question of the insensate 
cruelty of the English prison has been brought 
before the public by the fact that three-fourths 
of all the criminals in England are "habitual 
criminals." Investigation was called for by the 
case of a man who had spent more than forty- 
five of his sixty years in prison. He declared 
that from the first sentence he had been perse- 
cuted by the police, and had not had a chance 
to retrieve his position. 

With proofs before them that their prison 
system is intolerably severe, what did the Eng- 
lish authorities do? Instead of following the 



64 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

example of the more highly civilized countries, 
such as France, the United States and Ger- 
many, they passed a short law giving the right 
to judges to confine any one whom they re- 
garded as an "habitual offender," to prison for 
the rest of his life. This disgraceful law is the 
lowest depth reached by any legislature in 
Christendom for the last century and a half, 
and it was passed only the other day. 

Every country has found that as they have 
lightened punishment and brought about a bet- 
ter distribution of wealth, offences against the 
law have steadily diminished. Crimes have di- 
minished in England, but there alone in the 
last ten years the punishment has been made 
harsher. 

CHAPTER V 

English Justice 

"... I am the nerve o*er which do creep 
The else unfelt oppressions of mankind." 

—Shelley. 

A great Frenchman has said, "There can be 
no freedom without justice." And, indeed, the 
desire of justice is the most passionate, the 
most far-reaching and among the highest of 
moral impulses. 

There is no justice in Nature; it is an attri- 
bute of man alone, a reflection of the Divine in 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 65 

mankind. By far the greatest field for the 
display of justice is to be found in the distri- 
bution of wealth. In proportion as wealth is 
evenly distributed in a nation, you may be sure 
that in precisely that measure the sense of jus- 
tice among the inhabitants is acute and devel- 
oped. Judged by this standard, France to-day 
and Germany are the first countries in Europe, 
and Great Britain certainly the last. Mr. Booth 
has proved that one-third of the population of 
Great Britain is always on the verge of starva- 
tion ; fifteen millions of human beings living in 
appalling destitution and misery in the richest 
country that has ever been known in the world. 

The devil's advocate would argue that in an 
open race for wealth the weakest must come to 
grief; but everyone to-day is beginning to see 
that the open race is not a fair race and can 
never be fair, least of all in Great Britain, 
where you have an hereditary aristocracy, an 
hereditary wealthy land-owning class, and 
where, besides, all the powers of the State, of 
law, of education, of the police and of custom 
are used in contempt of justice to increase nat- 
ural inequalities of condition and not to dimin- 
ish them. 

Do not assume that I am pressing the point 
unduly. It would be impossible for anyone who 
did not know Great Britain intimately even to 
imagine how cunningly the scales of justice are 
weighted against the poor. When writing of 
the English laws, I have given some examples 



66 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

of this, but the disabilities of poverty, every- 
where heart-breaking, are in Great Britain in- 
finite and permeate every part of the national 
life. Two or three examples may here be given 
at haphazard. 

It was recently shown in a London journal 
that the poor, being forced to buy their coals in 
small quantities, pay twice the market price, 
and in many cases, even more, for this necessary 
of life. The co-operative stores in northern 
towns sell groceries at less than half the price 
the poor of London have to pay for them. 

Take the scandal of the so-called dangerous 
trades. Six years ago there was a Home Of- 
fice inquiry into the conditions of life in the 
"Hollow-ware" works at Lye and Cradley 
Heath, where large numbers of girls and young 
women are employed. The facts elicited were 
soul-sickening: the sufferings from lead pois- 
oning almost incredible; the mortality as high 
as the wage (less than $2 a week) was low. 
The official report declared that "the process 
used" was "dangerous to life" and should be 
"totally discontinued." An order was issued by 
the Home Office that after two years the pro- 
cess should be no longer used; this order has 
never been put in force. Nine out of ten of the 
employers go on as usual. In Great Britain, 
says Dr. Wallace, commenting on this almost 
incredible fact, there is practically "no govern- 
ment interference with conditions of labor 
which are a disgrace to civilization." 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 67 

The more one studies the disabilities of pov- 
erty in England the more shameful are the facts 
discovered. Adulteration has become a fine art 
and extends to every article of consumption. 
In spite of numberless prosecutions and fines, 
even the milk of the poor is still habitually adul- 
terated and the government shrinks from pun- 
ishing this sordid crime with imprisonment. 
Practically every article of food is adulterated 
and the government winks at this perpetual 
robbery of the poor by the well-to-do trades- 
man. 

One result of this dishonesty can be shown 
in figures: In the Garden Village of Bourn- 
ville, infant mortality stands at 65 per 1,000 
born; in St. Mary's Ward, Birmingham, it is 
331, or five times as much. Dr. Wallace asserts 
that "the moral degradation" of Great Britain 
is "increasing" ; both the deaths from drunken- 
ness and the number of suicides are steadily 
growing. 

It is almost incredible that the people who 
first treated dumb animals with kindness and 
consideration, who first got up a society for 
the prevention of cruelty to animals and first 
founded homes for lost dogs and lost cats, 
should be the very people to treat their poorer 
sisters and brothers with inhuman cruelty. In- 
stead of helping the poor to get out of the 
Slough of Despair, instead of making roads 
through it for their benefit, or indeed draining 
it once for all as even enlightened self-interest 



68 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

would counsel, they use the police and the law 
courts and all the powers of the State to thrust 
the miserable deeper into the mire, and further 
to degrade those they have already iniquitously 
disinherited. There is no public conscience in 
England speaking for the poor. 

Even those who have been rich and have 
lost their money for whatever reason are treat- 
ed in England with savage brutality; the 
wounded wolf is simply torn to pieces and eaten 
by the savage pack. 

The bankruptcy laws of Great Britain are the 
most barbarous ever framed and are adminis- 
tered without any care whatever for justice. 
"Vae victis" — "woe to the vanquished" is the 
English principle and the under-dog, though 
tortured to death, excites no pity. 

There are a thousand powers accorded to the 
petitioning creditor by which he and his fel- 
lows can blackmail the honest debtor who only 
wants time in order to pay in full, but I will not 
dwell on them or on the assistance given 
to the leeches by the English officials in Bank- 
ruptcy. 

Let it be taken that the debtor is made bank- 
rupt : he is examined in public by his creditors 
as if he were bound in a pillory and re-exam- 
ined again and again. His wife and children 
can be and often are subjected to the same tor- 
ture, and when all that he has got has been 
taken from him, even to the tools he uses to 
earn his living, his discharge may be and often 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 69 

is postponed for three or five or seven years, 
which means that for this additional period 
every penny he can earn belongs to his credit- 
ors. 

One other provision will show the spirit 
of the lav\^: suppose a wife claims this or that 
nick-nack or jewel as hers, given to her by her 
husband years before his bankruptcy when he 
was solvent. The object in dispute is held to 
belong to the creditors unless it was given to 
her more than eight years before, or she is re- 
quired to prove that her husband was solvent 
when he made the gift. In practical life every- 
thing she possesses that came from her bank- 
rupt husband is ruthlessly torn from her by 
the creditors. 

Such detestable and stupid provisions are not 
the worst features of this extraordinary pro- 
cedure. If at any time before his discharge, 
the bankrupt incurs a debt of £20 or more 
without informing the lender or shop-keeper 
of the fact that he is an undischarged bank- 
rupt, he is held to have obtained money under 
false pretences and is sent to prison for a year 
or so and the burden of proof is on the debtor. 

A thousand incredible instances of the sav- 
age cruelty of these laws could be given; but 
the mere outline is sufficient; the mere fact 
that the bankrupt is stripped bare of all he pos- 
sesses (if he fails to disclose any property of the 
value even of a dollar, he is proceeded against 
criminally for fraud) and then is regarded fpr 



70 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

a series of years as still "undischarged" and 
therefore earning money merely for his credit- 
ors; I say, the mere fact shows that the Eng- 
lish bankruptcy laws stand alone in the world 
as the most barbarous, the most iniquitous ever 
framed. 

They are so extravagantly inhuman that they 
defeat their own purpose. The '^undischarged 
bankrupt" usually conceals the fact and runs 
the risk of prison, and when he earns money 
necessary to keep himself and those dear to 
him, he doesn't dream of handing it over to his 
creditors. He thereby commits fraud, but ne- 
cessity knows no law. Heine puts it humor- 
ously when he says that the figure of justice in 
London has lost her scales, but carries the 
sword bared in her hand. He sees that Eng- 
land is still almpst a feudal state and "if the per- 
son and property of the people are now de- 
pendent on the laws and not as aforetime, on 
the whim of a lord, still these laws are only an- 
other sort of teeth with which the privileged 
class seizes and tears the ordinary citizen. No 
tyrant," he adds, "was ever so barbarous as the 
English laws." If Heine was justified, and I 
think he was, what can be said for English free- 
dom? 

If one cares to realize how hopelessly Eng- 
land lags behind the foremost civilized coun- 
tries, he has only to compare the provisions of 
the French bankruptcy laws with those of the 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 71 

English. But, then, the French laws were 
framed by Napoleon, a great man, and not by 
greedy shopkeepers. Under the "Code Na- 
poleon," no officer of the army or navy can be 
made a bankrupt ; no artist or scientist or man 
of letters ; only the trading classes whose sole 
object it is to make money, can be subjected 
to this degradation. The attempts of the Eng- 
lish law to turn unfortunate men into criminals 
by withholding their discharge for years, are 
unknown to the humaner legislation of conti- 
nental Europe. 

It may be worth while to contrast the pro- 
visions of the present English law with Shake- 
speare's views in "Cymbeline." That they are 
his own opinions is manifest, for they are in- 
finitely more humane than any legislation 
known to man as yet: 

"I know you are more clement than vile men 
Who of their broken debtors take a third, 
A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again 
On their abatement." 

The creditor is vile according to the wisest 
man of our race if he takes a third or even a 
tenth and lets his debtor thrive on the rest; 
but what shall be said of the English laws 
which take all and more than all, and attempt 
even to force the debtor to go on for years in 
poverty and destitution, working not for his 
wife and children but for his creditors. Such 



72 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

greed is insane ; and the country that can frame 
such laws knows nothing either of liberty or of 
justice. 

It is computed that the wealth of the coun- 
try doubles itself every twenty years and the 
first war loan of fifteen hundred million of 
dollars was over subscribed in London alone 
on the first day. Compare this with the well- 
known fact that the whole system of the Eng- 
lish Poor Law administration with its so-called 
workhouses has hopelessly broken down 
through meanness and inhumanity, inhumanity 
so devilish that, like the unimaginable gins and 
snares of the bankruptcy laws, it defeats its 
own object. 

The cost of the institution runs into millions 
annually, but no poor man ever goes near an 
English workhouse if he can possibly help it. 
The great buildings and large staffs are all kept 
up for a few orphan children and people on 
the verge of dissolution. The stigma of the 
poor-house is more loathed in England than 
even that of the prison. One need not speak 
of the degradation incurred nor of the wretched 
food. One provision alone will show how in- 
sanely cruel the whole system is. 

If a man goes into the poor-house to get shel- 
ter for the night, he is not allowed to leave 
next morning at six o'clock to get work even 
though he is strong and willing. He must first 
stop and break so much stone — an equivalent 
in value to the bed and food he has had. Con- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 73 

sequently, he can never get out much before 
noon when it is practically impossible to find 
work. In this way British charity makes the 
poor poorer, and degrades them into the bar- 
gain. No wonder Mr. Sidney Webb, the high- 
est authority on the matter, writes of it as fol- 
lows: 

"Underneath the feet of the whole wage- 
earning class is the abyss of the Poor Law. I 
see before me a respectable family applying for 
relief. What do we do to them ? We, the Gov- 
ernment of England, break up the family. We 
strip each individual of what makes life worth 
living. When the man enters the workhouse 
he is stripped of his citizenship — branded as too 
infamous to vote for a member of Parliament. 
Once in the workhouse, we put him to toil or 
to loiter under conditions that are so demoral- 
izing that we turn him into a wastrel. And we 
strip the wife of her children. We send her to 
the wash-tub or the sewing-room, where she 
associates with prostitutes and imbeciles. The 
little children, if they are under five, are taken 
to the workhouse nursery, where they also are 
tended by prostitutes and imbeciles. There 
they remain, day after day, without ever going 
down the workhouse steps until they are old 
enough to go to the Poor Law school, or until 
they are taken down in their coffins, owing to 
the terrible mortality among the workhouse 
babies." 

One more fact and it shall be taken from the 



74 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

immediate present: The British government 
had been trying for months past to get its vol- 
unteer army on the cheap by stories of German 
barbarism and German atrocities. At first the 
authorities offered the magnificent sum of five 
shiUings, or a dollar and a quarter, a week to 
the poor widow whose husband had been killed 
at the front. They have had to increase the 
price to seven shillings and sixpence or nearly 
two dollars a week. But then came the ques- 
tion of how much extra money should be given 
for each child, so orphaned. The authorities 
fixed this in their wisdom at half the price 
which is usually accorded for an illegitimate 
child under a so-called "affiliation order." Af- 
ter this achievement nothing further need be 
said of British justice or British magnanimity. 

The motto of England should be : The poor 
are our only philanthropists; they sell all that 
they have and give to the rich. 

But the settled purpose of English law to 
take from the Have Nots everything they may 
get, is only the other side of the declared Eng- 
lish desire "to give to those that have." In re- 
cent times, Parliament, not content with allow- 
ing greedy individuals to steal the common land 
from the people, has freed the land from the 
feudal service always expected from it in the 
past. The landlords now should be compelled 
to support the army as they did in the middle 
ages, and so pay some rent for this exclusive 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 75 

possession, but their burden has been light- 
ened. 

All the benefits which the landlords and the 
House of Lords have given to themselves are 
but a fleabite to the taxes which the oligarchy 
and the new rich have exacted from the grow- 
ing industries of the present and the immediate 
past. The story of the founding of English 
railways is as fantastic as an Eastern tale ; but 
it belongs to the past, and one example from 
the present will be more convincing. For in- 
stance, when the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain 
was about thirty-five years of age and the most 
powerful citizen in Birmingham, there was a 
slum which he resolved for the health of the 
town to improve out of existence. When he 
began negotiations, he found that the individ- 
ual owners were determined to get the utter- 
most farthing for their insanitary property. 
But he was not a business man for nothing. 
He sought and obtained powers from Parlia- 
ment to expropriate the owners over a much 
larger area than he intended to improve. He 
thus obtained a power of bargaining. "If you 
won't take so much for your house and ground," 
he said to the too greedy landlords, "I'll run 
the main street so as to leave your property in 
a back alley untouched." He improved the 
slum out of existence and incidentally the 
health of Birmingham and was hailed on all 
sides as a benefactor though condemned as 



76 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

one who drove a hard bargain. When I asked 
him: was it true that he had got the land and 
houses below their proper value, he laughed: 

"Birmingham is in England," he said, "and 
not in Utopia ; I had always to pay from two to 
over three times as much as the property was 
worth." The greedy individual, and especially 
the landlord, is always favored in England. 

The most poisonous development in the leg- 
islation of the last hundred years is the growth 
of joint-stock companies. They show all the 
evils of state-ownership and none of its bene- 
fits. Geothe saw that all industries should be 
controlled by the individual or by the state; 
the hybred was of the nature of a monopoly 
and should be prohibited. 

In France in 1791, the government passed a 
law prohibiting all associations for the ex- 
ploiting of industries, and ever since the French 
have only admitted the right of such associa- 
tions against their better judgment, so to speak, 
and after taking many precautions. But, in 
Great Britain joint-stock companies have been 
permitted and even encouraged to rob the pub- 
lic at will, without incurring any responsibility. 
For five and twenty years neither the promoter 
nor the directors were held responsible for the 
misstatements published in the prospectuses 
they issued by the million. Lies are sacred as 
the chief stock in trade of the robbers. Even 
now, it is possible in London for one man to 
form a company with half a dozen of his clerks. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 77 

and entice the public by plausible circulars to 
lend him money to buy stocks and shares with. 
He may even declare what dividends he finds 
most likely to win more clients and finally, un- 
der one pretext or another, he can pocket the 
money entrusted to him, and declare the com- 
pany bankrupt. He is then free to begin the 
game again in the next street. "Heads, I win ; 
tails, you lose" on a large scale is permitted by 
the English law; but the small gambler with 
his three-card trick or the thimble-rigger is at 
once arrested and sent to prison. 

In France and in Germany, there is careful 
State supervision of all joint-stock companies, 
and the attempt to swindle is made difficult and 
dangerous. In Paris, a bank would not dare to 
put its name on the prospectus of a company 
which, a couple of years afterwards, might fail 
and go into liquidation. The customers who 
had lost their money would expect the bank to 
recoup them, and would certainly hold the 
bank responsible for all false statements. But 
in London, such a swindle would be almost sure 
to pass unnoticed. The robbers, so long as 
they appear to have money, are given every li- 
cense by the English law, it is only the poor 
who are harried by it, only the unfortunate who 
need fear it. 

This chapter on the English sense of justice 
should find its fitting climax in some pages de- 
voted to the ^'Corruption" in England. I could 
fill a volume with facts gathered in a quarter 



78 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

of a century spent in journalism in London; 
facts which it was impossible to publish in 
Great Britain where truth itself is held to be a 
libel. There is nothing the English pride them- 
selves so much upon as their honesty and free 
speech; curiously enough their honesty can be 
judged from the way they have made truthful 
speech impossible. There is, in my opinion, 
and I shall give reasons for it shortly, more 
commercial dishonesty and more political 
"graft" as well, to be found in England in a 
day than in the United States in a month or in 
France in a year. The Panama scandal could 
never have leaked out in Great Britain and if 
it had been published no particular attention 
would have been paid to it. Recently a Minis- 
ter who had been a Chancellor of the Excheq- 
uer was kind enough to sell some of his land to 
the British government at a price about three- 
fold its worth; people shrugged their should- 
ers merely and muttered "bad taste" when some 
radical journalists exposed the disgraceful 
"graft." 

The famous purchase of the Suez Canal 
shares was never even scrutinized, and yet it 
would have repaid investigation. 

But in spite of the "muzzling" of the press 
in England, every now and then some swindle 
leaks out and from its enormity any thinker 
must draw dreadful inferences which he dare 
not publish or even hint at in any English" pub- 
lication. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 79 

One example of such corruption must be 
given by which the general status may be 
judged. Some four or five years ago a dock- 
yard inspector rejected a battle-ship built in a 
famous private shipbuilding yard. The decis- 
ion of the official was disputed by the private 
firm in question and the matter came into the 
public prints. It was proven that a rudder had 
been supplied wi?h a flaw or fault in the cast- 
ing and that the fault, though measured by 
feet, had been "puttied up" and then painted 
over. Similar faults similarly disguised, had 
been discovered by the same exasperatingly in- 
quisitive official in the armor plates of the bow. 
The question as to whether putty painted over 
was likely to resist foreign shot or shell as well 
as hardened steel was discussed in one or two 
papers; but nothing came of it. In a day or 
two, the incident was forgotten. 

Is it wonderful under these circumstances 
that the German navy and especially German 
submarines have made a great name for them- 
selves at the expense of the British navy in 
spite of its great size and high traditions? 

An instance of the corruption prevalent in 
English business was once brought to my no- 
tice which I regard as typical and informative 
in spite of its mildness. The Prince of Monaco 
had a large steam-yacht built in London. It 
was built and fitted regardless of expense and 
passed Ai at Lloyd's. After delivery and ac- 
ceptance the Prince found that it had a list to 



8o ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

one side, of I shrink from saying how many de- 
grees, but certainly more than five. 

The Prince declared that he had accepted the 
yacht because he regarded Lloyd*s certificate 
as an absolute guarantee. I thought that most 
men would have made the same mistake. He 
asked me would I go with him to Lloyd's to 
find out about it. I was eager to gain a new ex- 
perience. We went together one morning to 
Lloyd's and after more than an hour's search 
found a quiet person who undertook to give us 
the required information. When the plaint 
was formulated he said he knew nothing about 
it ; adding that the fact of a list of five or even 
ten degrees would not prevent a ship being 
classed as Ai by Lloyd's. I replied that the 
information was interesting and should be 
widely known. "Would he kindly tell me how 
many degrees would prevent a ship from be- 
ing classed as Ai?" He replied curtly that he 
could not say; it would depend on the ship. 
Thereupon the Prince said that he had regarded 
the Ai at Lloyd's as a proof of excellence of 
design and workmanship. "Was he mistaken?" 
The official shrugged broad shoulders and de- 
clared finally that "Caveat emptor" was the 
best rule, but he would look into the matter 
and write. Nothing valuable came from his 
investigation. The Times refused to print an 
article giving a dispassionate account of this 
transaction. "The truth would do English ship- 
building no good," I was informed. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 8i 

The other day Sir Stanley Buckmaster, the 
English Censor, declared that he regarded it as 
an important part of his duty to prevent un- 
pleasant truths from coming to the knowledge 
of the British public. "Where ignorance is 
bliss, *tis folly to be wise" is the English con- 
viction. 

CHAPTER VI 

The German Nation and Its Ideal 

Goethe says that the character of a nation 
can be judged by its army and by its lav/s. In 
the present comparison between England and 
Germany and their respective ideals, I have 
hardly taken their armies into account, but a 
word or two must now be said on the subject. 

Everyone knows in the main what the Ger- 
man army has done: everyone admits its as- 
tounding efficiency : it is not too much to say 
that the German example in war as in business 
has raised our conception of the possible effi- 
ciency of work in this world. 

It is more difficult to show what the English 
army has achieved ; but now, after eight months 
and a half of war, "Le Matin" publishes a state- 
ment which puts the matter in a nutshell. The 
Russian troops, the Paris paper states, are hold- 
^J^g 857 miles of frontier ; the Servian and Mon- 
tenegrin armies, 219; the French troops 544 
miles; the English troops 31^^ miles, and the 



82 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Belgian troops iy% miles. It would be paint- 
ing the lily to comment on this fact. From 
another article we learn that the British have 
already spent more money on the war than the 
French. In its issue of April loth, the London 
Times attacks what it calls "the muddle in the 
war-office" on account of "the shortness of mu- 
nitions." The paper declares that it is not the 
drinking habits of the working man that is at 
fault but "the lack of foresight and organiza- 
tion" at Headquarters, and finally points to 
Lord Kitchener as responsible by asserting 
that "an end must be put to the tradition that 
soldiers should control *war manufactures' " 
for "they have brought the country to the 
verge" of shortage in what is most necessary. 
And this in spite of the fact that money is no 
object and that the British could have drawn 
all the supplies they wanted from the United 
States, thanks to our convenient definition of 
neutrality. 

These few facts and the strictures of The 
Times more than justify all I have said of the 
English governing classes and their incompe- 
tence : they are incapable even of selecting de- 
cently efficient instruments. 

In regard to law and the administration of 
justice, the almost incredible backwardness of 
England has been established by a thousand 
facts and where necessary by comparisons with 
France. In this or that minor matter some 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 83 

small errors may have crept in ; but the indict- 
ment as a whole stands four-square. 

It becomes necessary now to speak of Ger- 
many at length and I must admit that I do not 
know Germany nearly so well as I know Eng- 
land. I lived in England the major part of five 
and twenty years, and studied and wrote about 
it day by day. In Germany I spent only five 
years; but the years passed there, were sensi- 
tive years of youth, when I was quick to receive 
and record new impressions, and I hope my 
comparative ignorance of the intimate life of 
the German people may not vitiate my conclu- 
sions. For in this matter, ignorance is a poor 
guide even when winged with imagination. If 
I had never worked and played and argued 
with German youths and talked with German 
girls; if I had never thrilled to German 
thoughts, nor recited German verses in tranc- 
ing moonlight, I might perchance, have been 
able to persuade myself as Mr. H. G. Wells ap- 
parently has done, that the French and English 
are "intellectually more virile peoples." As it 
is, I don't believe that the countrymen of 
Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Helmholtz need fear 
comparison with any of the sons of men in pure 
intelligence and when it comes to virility it 
seems to me that the nation which was cradled 
by Bismarck and now holds Russia back with 
one hand and France and Belgium and Eng- 
land with the other, and after nine months of 



84 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

war, against odds of three to one, is still fight- 
ing everywhere in the enemies' countries, need 
bow to no rival in the manly virtues. Mr. Wells 
declares that the Allies are winning and "will 
continue to win"; but Germany, I imagine, is 
fairly content with that sort of defeat which 
has given her all Belgium to the sea, together 
with one-tenth of France, and on the other 
frontier has brought her to the gates of War- 
saw. 

Mr. Arthur Balfour, once upon a time Prime 
Minister of Great Britain, and renowned for 
the well-bred interest he takes in philosophy, 
did not hesitate at the last Lord Mayor's Ban- 
quet to talk of Germany as "the enemy of civ- 
ilization." 

Civilization is a parlous word : but if we take 
it to mean the humanization of man in society, 
it ought to be possible to make Mr. Balfour 
ashamed of his ridiculous statement, even 
though Lord Rosebery has since backed it up 
and embellished it. At any rate, if Germany 
had not done more in the last century or so and 
particularly in the last half century for the 
humanization of man than England, I should be 
ashamed of having written this book. I believe 
that she has done as much for the ideal as even 
France, and France's gift to humanity in the 
last century and a half has been out of all com- 
parison greater than England's. Let me now 
try to state the German case fairly : I shall cer- 
tainly not exceed the praise which Mr. H. G. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 85 

Wells lavished on her just before the war broke 
out. 

A nation, like an individual, should be 
judged by the contradictory virtues it em- 
braces and reconciles. A man may be very 
brave and yet not excite our admiration more 
than a rat or a bulldog which displays the same 
disdain of pain or death ; but if the man is not 
only courageous, but gentle and considerate of 
others he at once approaches the ideal. And 
what is true of a man is true of a nation. An 
isolated or insular people is expected to love 
individual liberty and the hardy virtues that 
spring from individual self-assertion; but it 
only becomes admirable to us if it unites this 
love with a passion for equality and even- 
handed justice and a most sensitive considera- 
tion for the poor and the outcast and the disin- 
herited. 

Similarly a people devoted to the idea of the 
nation; to the self-assertion and glorification 
of the whole — Deutschland ueber Alles — may 
be expected to be efficient in conflict, to dis- 
play high military virtues of foresight, courage 
and self-sacrifice; but it can only then become 
entirely admirable to us when it also shows a 
sensitive regard for the rights of the individual, 
for the claims even of peculiarly endowed in- 
dividuals to live their own lives and cultivate 
their own special powers. It is because I be- 
lieve Germany is nearer the ideal even on this 
side than England, that I wish to persuade my 



86 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

American countrymen to reconsider the whole 
subject. There is more individual liberty to- 
day in Germany than there is in England: 
greater freedom of speech and writing. 

I do not wish to represent Germany as an 
ideal state, or the German people as compact 
of all the virtues. I have no desire to color or 
to overstate the truth. Germany is a militant 
hierarchy, an instrument that is of conflict and 
I would wish it to be an industrial democracy. 
But there is no doubt that this hierarchy is ac- 
cepted and beloved by the vast majority of the 
German people just as the hereditary oligarchy 
is accepted and beloved by the vast majority of 
Englishmen. 

The French republic appears to me to be the 
higher, the more modern form of government, 
better adapted to modern industrial conditions. 
I prefer, too, the greater equality shown in 
French life and the deeper feeling for justice 
which animates all the laws and institutions of 
that noble French people. In the quarrel be- 
tween France and Germany I lean to the side 
of France and pray for some equitable settle- 
ment of the two disputed provinces. But, as 
between England and Germany, no lover of the 
ideal can hesitate for a moment. There is much 
the same hierarchy in England as in Germany, 
the same hereditary nobility, but in Germany 
it is alive and useful, v/hile in England it is 
worse than dead and useless. In Germany, the 
aristocracy regards itself as the steel head of 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 87 

the German lance and really displays all the 
warrior virtues in their highest form. One 
may detest the Preussicher Leutenant; but he 
is not to be despised. One has to admit that 
he knows his job and does it, that he is super- 
latively efficient, that he has all the Spartan 
virtues with a more than Spartan power of in- 
fecting his dependents and social inferiors 
with his own manly and austere enthusiasm. 

The prowess of the English aristocrat on 
the other hand, is displayed chiefly in pleasures 
and sports. He toils not, neither does he spin 
and while he regards work as beneath him and 
knowledge as contemptible, his example as a 
parasite drifts downward, like water on sand, 
infecting all the less favored millions of his 
countrymen with a false and base ideal. 

Let us now consider the German ideal and 
see what it implies and its results. The Ger- 
man wants a perfect state. How near does he 
come to realizing his desire? 

The idea of a perfect state is very like the 
idea of a perfect individual. The phrase is 
somewhat vague : one may regard Pericles, or 
Lincoln, or Jesus as models, yet these are 
all very dissimilar personalities. Curiously 
enough, however, as soon as we think of "per- 
fection" in this way we are struck at once by 
the astonishing similarity between the Eng- 
lish and the German ideal. The first thing 
taught to an English boy at a public school is 
that to be an "all-round man" he must be brave 



88 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

and a good fighter and always ready to take 
his own part. In the current phrase: "his 
hands must be able to keep his head." Noth- 
ing is more despised than any attempt to avoid 
fighting ; any boy who puts up with the small- 
est slight, no matter what his motive may be, 
is usually set down as a coward. Now this is 
precisely the German ideal of a state : the aim 
is "all-round" excellence; but first of all, the 
German State must always be ready to take its 
own part and never shirk fighting. 

Some of us Celts and Latins are not in love 
with this ideal; we may regard defence as a 
duty and legitimate ; but we condemn aggres- 
sion and unnecessary war as a crime against 
humanity and we regard large well-equipped 
armies and navies with suspicion as likely to 
lead to needless fighting. But to hear the Eng- 
lish condemning the German ideal when it is 
their own makes the judicious smile. 

It is in accord with the true values to com- 
pare France and Germany and point the moral 
with an occasional glance at England, for 
France, thanks to her glorious revolution and 
to the genius of Napoleon is one of the most 
perfectly organized of modern states. First of 
all in efficiency, as a power of offense and de- 
fense, there can be no comparison after the 
teaching of this war. But admitting that Ger- 
many as a hierarchy is naturally more efficient 
as a military organism than a democracy, let 
us come to the converse test. Which state is 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 89 

the freer? In which is the individual more 
considered ? 

In order that the body politic may be per- 
fect, each individual cell composing it must be 
perfect too. Every cell must be fed and func- 
tioning properly in order that the whole organ- 
ism may be at its best. If the utmost individ- 
ual freedom be indeed an ideal (which is not 
by any means proved, though usually taken 
for granted in America), then the perfect state 
must accord to each individual the largest pos- 
sible measure of freedom. 

In 1888 Bismarck declared that in time the 
Germans would overcome the hostility of the 
inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine. "We Ger- 
mans," he said, "govern more benevolently and 
humanely than the French." And he went on 
in words which Mr. Balfour ought to learn by 
heart: "we are, besides, able to grant the in- 
habitants (of Alsace-Lorraine) a far greater 
degree of communal and individual freedom 
than the French institutions and traditions per- 
mit or indeed ever have permitted." 

It looks to-day as if Bismarck were justified 
in this remarkable forecast for all the repre- 
sentatives of Alsace-Lorraine in the Reichstag 
voted with the other Germans in favor of the 
war-supplies. Germany has won over a hos- 
tile population in forty years, and it has suc- 
ceeded in part by stimulating and satisfying 
the desire of growth which is inherent in every 
people, and in part by according to the inhabi- 



go ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

tants of Alsace-Lorraine perhaps as large a 
measure of communal and individual freedom 
as they were accustomed to as Frenchmen. 
Now, as Mr. Balfour was not ashamed of gov- 
erning Ireland after more than a century of so- 
called British freedom by throwing his politi- 
cal opponents into prison without trial and 
tyrannizing over the whole country with a des- 
potic Crimes Act, he will no doubt be glad to 
learn how "the enemy of civilization," as he 
loves to call Germany, succeeded where the 
pink of civilization and propriety, when en- 
gaged in a similar task, failed lamentably. 

First of all, Alsace-Lorraine under German 
rule participated in the extraordinary growth 
of population and trade which has changed the 
face of Germany in the last twenty years; the 
two provinces have grown in population and 
prosperity as much as Ireland has shrunk in 
the same time, and prosperity is a potent fac- 
tor always making for content. Then, too, 
German rule has not diminished freedom in 
Alsace-Lorraine. 

Both France and Germany are self-governed 
in the largest sense of the word; both enjoy 
manhood suffrage and are thus far in advance 
of Great Britain with her suffrage restricted 
by property qualifications as well as by the 
plural voting of the rich. But in France au- 
thority has always been more centralized than 
it is in Germany. Since the time of Tacitus, 
the Germans have always had a large meas- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 91 

ure of communal freedom and communal pow- 
er. The saying, "L'etat c'est moi" of Louis 
XIV was never true of Germany. In Germany 
each commune has some power in determin- 
ing its own taxes and in spending them accord- 
ing to its desires ; whereas in France the orders 
come from Paris and thus democratic France, 
strange to say, has hardly a larger measure of 
communal self-government and individual free- 
dom than "the military despotism" of Messrs. 
Balfour, Wells and Bennett. In military effi- 
ciency, in discipline, forethought and devotion, 
Germany stands easily first among the nations 
and in the opposite hardy virtues which flour- 
ish in individual and communal liberty, it is 
not inferior even to France. 

France possesses several marked advantages : 
first of all its land was fairly partitioned out 
amongst its inhabitants by the revolution. It 
would have been better had it been kept as a 
possession by the State and rented out for 
terms of years. Private property in what is a 
monopoly by nature is a mistake; it ensures 
thrift, but it brings out sordid meanness ; it is 
mainly responsible for the limiting of the birth- 
rate in France ; it hinders growth without pro- 
ducing an equivalent measure of happiness. 
But in contrast with the legalized robbery of 
British landlords, the comparatively equal di- 
vision of the land in France is almost ideal. It 
ensures wide-spread well-being and happiness. 
It is on the whole preferable to the greater in- 



92 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

equality seen in Germany. It satisfies more 
completely the desire for justice, while being 
hardly less favorable to growth. 

When I study the codified laws of Germany, 
the result of twenty years of labor, I find them 
inferior in nearly every respect to the Code 
Napoleon. The bankruptcy laws are nothing 
like so generous as those of France, though far 
more humane than those of England. The de- 
sire of all German Courts of justice is evidently 
to arrive at a compromise or reasonable com- 
position of every dispute as quickly and as 
cheaply as possible. The lower courts espec- 
ially, the Amtsgerichte and Landesgerichte and 
their judges appear to be inspired with this in- 
tention, and in consequence, business disputes 
are settled with wonderful expedition and at a 
ridiculously small cost. 

I regard both the German and French judges 
as superior to English judges. The French 
judges are less pedantic, and much fairer- 
minded than the English while the Germans 
are better informed. The judges of both the 
continental nations strike one as modern and 
cosmopolitan, whereas the English judges even 
of the Court of Appeal are apt to be pedantic 
or whimsical; insular, in fact; they usually 
know at most the rudiments of one modern 
language, but certainly not two or more; and 
have no knowledge of any other social con- 
ditions, save those of England. 

The laws and the judges of these countries 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 93 

may be tested by their attitude toward women. 

If we take the position of married women 
and the laws relating to divorce, we are at once 
brought face to face with startling and almost 
inexplicable differences. Divorce is very much 
cheaper and more easily obtained in Germany 
or in France than in England. Only in Eng- 
land is the desire for divorce on the part of 
both husband and wife, a reason for not grant- 
ing it. When both parties to the contract are 
eager to withdraw from it, then the English 
law with whimsical unreason refuses to set 
either of them free. 

In both the continental countries the adul- 
tery of the husband is sufficient ground not 
only for divorce and large alimony, but also to 
ensure that the guardianship of the children is 
given to the wife and mother. In England, 
cruelty must be proven against the husband as 
well as unfaith ; the allowances for alimony are 
notoriously smaller in proportion to wealth and 
there is evidence of a constant desire to prefer 
the guardianship of the father though guilty of 
adultery to that of the faithful wife. 

The status of educated women is compara- 
tively high in both France and Germany and 
low in England. There are many practising 
women-lawyers and barristers in France and 
not one in Great Britain or in Germany. There 
are many more women doctors in France and 
in Germany than there are in Great Britain. 
In fine, everyone who has studied the matter 



94 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

knows that while education is esteemed in 
France and honored in Germany, it is rather 
disdained in England and especially is this true 
in regard to women. 

There are other and even higher tests by 
which the health of a national organism can be 
judged. In our industrial civilization, with our 
mastery of natural forces and consequent enor- 
mous and unprecedented increase of wealth, it 
was only to be expected that nine men out of 
ten would rush to get rich and would crowd all 
the avenues leading to wealth. In the mad rush, 
which country has taken most care of the poor 
and the weak and the wastrel, and which coun- 
try has best provided for growth by encour- 
aging every rare variety of intellect, talent and 
character? Which nation has cultivated both 
the weakest and the finest, the most sensitive 
flowers — the poor on one hand and on the other 
those who steer humanity, so to speak, the 
brain-workers who do not desire riches mainly, 
the Sacred Band of the Intellectuals, the lovers 
of science and thought, the artists and men of 
letters? 

The question needs only to be stated to be 
answered. In both respects, Germany has done 
much more than any other country. Unem- 
ployment and poverty meant waste and ineffi- 
ciency and consequently, Germany with its ideal 
of an efficient organism tackled the difficulty at 
once and from many sides, as a duty, and prac- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 95 

tically put some sort of end to it by a thousand 
agencies, by labor bureaus in town and country 
on the one hand, and by state-aided insurances 
against accident and unemployment on the 
other. The cost of guarding against the dam- 
age to life and health of the dangerous trades 
was made a tax on the industries themselves 
by Germany, while in England, greedy employ- 
ers are allowed to disregard even the orders of 
the Home Office and murder the weak almost 
at will. 

The yearly bill of the German State for the 
care of its sick, injured and aged, amounts to 
thirty-four millions sterling; whereas in Eng- 
land under the Workmen's Compensation Act, 
while less than three millions sterling is paid 
in compensation, four millions a year go in 
expenses. Germany spends on social services 
50 per cent more than on her army and navy. 

In 1 88 1, Bismarck told the world the ideal 
of Germany in regard to poverty. "A State is 
responsible," he said, "for the things it does 
not do. Our laws," he went on, "already shield 
the laborer from starvation. But that is not 
enough. The workman should look forward 
without fear to the future and old age. The 
present bill intends to keep alive in the poorest, 
the sense of human dignity which even the 
worst-off German shall enjoy if I have my way. 
The laborer should feel that he is not going to 
be a mere almstaker when he is sick or old, but 



96 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

that he possesses a fund which is his own." 
And then he went on to talk of a ^'Christian 
State" with its wider responsibilities. 

For years now, there has been less unem- 
ployment in Germany than in any other State 
in Christendom, less than in the United States 
or even France and the large immigration into 
Germany alone of European countries, proves 
the superior status of the wage-earner. 

The problems of poverty and unemployment 
have been practically solved in Germany, 
whereas in England nearly one-half of the pop- 
ulation always live below the line of normal 
health and strength, while the unemployed and 
starving constitute, as Carlyle puts it, "a 
sloughing sore, eating away and enfeebling the 
healthy part of the body politic." When I 
think of the two countries and of the way "rich" 
England has shuffled out of her responsibilities 
and has not only neglected her poor but does 
more than any other State to degrade and in- 
jure them by law, I am constrained to regard 
England and not Germany as "the enemy of 
civilization." 

But it is in the treatment of the "intellec- 
tuals" that Germany ranks above all modern 
States, while in this particular England stands 
somewhat on the level of Spain. It is here 
that we shall find the true explanation of Ger- 
man progress and German patriotism and Ger- 
man pride. First of all, the Universities are 
freer of access in Germany than they are in 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 97 

France and of course^, still freer than in Eng- 
land. The chemical and physical laboratories 
supported by the State in Germany, are more 
numerous than in France and ten fold more nu- 
merous than in Great Britain. There have been 
forty-six Nobel winners of prizes in science: 
fourteen of them have been Germans, seven 
have been Frenchmen and only five have been 
Englishmen: the mere fact speaks loudly 
enough. 

The highly educated class is thrice as large 
in Germany in proportion to population as it 
is in France and at least ten times more numer- 
ous than it is in Great Britain. I could mass 
figures to prove this and to show the wonderful 
effect of it ; but a few bare facts must suffice : 
there are 100,000 University and Polytechnic 
students of the first class in Germany and 
hardly more than 10,000 in Great Britain and 
of these 10,000, barely half are to be compared 
with the German student. Since the founding 
of the Empire, the population has increased 
from 40,000,000 to 70,000,000 and the number 
of students from 22,000 to 100,000. And finally, 
while the population of Germany increased 1.4 
in 191 3, the number of students increased 4.6, 
and of the total number 4.4 are women. 

One result of the widely diffused and better 
education in Germany is that artists and men 
of science and of letters of the best class have 
a far larger public in Germany to appeal to than 
anywhere else in Europe. I have already 



98 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

shown how infinitely higher the position of a 
great writer or thinker is in France than in 
England, and the position of such a man in Ger- 
many is as good as it is in France. Take the 
highest class of all, the prophets and lovers of 
the deeper truths, who usually are disliked by 
their contemporaries for they live "on the fore- 
head of the time to come" as Keats puts it, and 
consider their status. Friedrich Nietzsche who 
loved strength and believed in the superman 
and hated the household German virtues and 
the homely German life, nevertheless found 
readers and passionate support in Germany. A 
generation or two earlier, Heine mocked and 
made fun of Germany from one end of his life 
to the other, but yet he, too, was read and 
loved by thousands of Germ.ans. But what 
prophet has ever been honored in England dur- 
ing his own lifetime? What lover of men and 
of the humane ideal has ever found a hearing 
in those sordid ears? It is mediocrity that is 
loved and honored and rewarded in England, 
mediocrity and those who defend the oligarchy 
and the present condition of things by praising 
England and all things English without dis- 
crimination or understanding, like Kipling, 
Wells, Balfour & Co.; but the true artists and 
teachers and lovers of the ideal, the Brownings, 
the Whistlers, the Wallaces, the Davidsons and 
the Middletons find there a bitter, cold recep- 
tion. Whenever I have thought of England in 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 99 

the last fifteen years, of her neglect of the poor 
and of her contempt of her real teachers and 
prophets on the one hand, and on the other of 
her great place in the world and her oligarchy 
and its arrogance and power, I have always 
felt that England is the real enemy of civili- 
zation, for more than a hundred years now the 
chief obstacle to the humanization of man. 

I have asserted that life in Germany is freer 
than life in England or even in France ; but it is 
extremely difficult to prove this : freedom is too 
impalpable to be measured by figures; one is 
of necessity thrown back on the statements of 
authorities. The Reichstag Deputy and con- 
vinced Socialist, Herr Sudekum, the other day 
defending the German Socialists' vote for the 
war-credits, said: "What good would any 
change do us? In reality no country is so free 
as Germany. France and England together 
don't possess as much freedom as our German 
Empire/' Let us take the best American 
opinion on the subject, that of Mr. Price Col- 
lier, with the understanding that Mr. Collier is 
more English even than the English in his dis- 
like of governmental interference with the in- 
dividual ; yet he says : 

"It is a strange contradiction in German life 
that while they are as a people governed mi- 
nutely and in detail, forbidden personal free- 
dom along certain lines to which we should find 
it hard to submit, they are freer morally, freer 



100 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

in their literature, their art, their music, their 
social life, and in their unself-conscious express- 
ion of them than other people." 

Without fear of contradiction I assert that 
this so-called "military despotism" has not 
only a larger measure of individual freedom 
than England, but it is also more socialistic 
than England is likely to become for many a 
day. The waste lands belonging to the State 
have been developed by a magnificent Forestry 
Department where young Englishmen are now 
sent to learn their work before being dispatched 
to India as forest officials. The German rail- 
ways belong to the State and are managed 
more successfully than they were managed as 
private concerns. And this socialistic institu- 
tion is cunningly used to increase the efficiency 
of the army. It is well known that the real su- 
periority of the German army over all other 
armies is to be found in its splendid non-com- 
missioned officers. These men are picked from 
the ranks and spend fifteen years with the col- 
ors. But they are kept at the highest pitch of 
efficiency by the certainty and importance of 
their reward. If they do well, they are all sure 
of places after their term of military service, 
either on the state railways or in the police. 
And wherever they are used they prove them- 
selves superbly efficient, energetic and hon- 
est. In England, an attempt has been made, 
too, to ensure employment to old soldiers, who 
liave served twelve years with the colors. They 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? loi 

are enrolled as Commissionaires and employed 
at the doors of restaurants and clubs to play 
polite and pouch tips. 

In almost every respect, German life is saner 
and healthier than life in England. 

In the great majority of German cities pub- 
lic-utility services, gas, water, electricity, 
street-railways, slaughter-houses, and even ca- 
nals, docks, and pawnshops are owned and con- 
trolled by the cities themselves. There is no 
loop-hole for private plunder, but a desire on 
the part of all citizens to enforce the strictest 
economy and the most expert efficiency. 

Or take a test not of wisdom in material 
things ; but of character, and of morals in the 
highest sense. I remember in Germany, thirty 
years ago, there were many Brod-Studenten, 
students who had to gain a living from the 
knowledge acquired in the University ; but they 
were conscientious. At that time, there were 
several thousand places as Christian pastors 
unfilled in Protestant Germany. Thousands of 
students wanted a decent living but would not 
preach or practise a religion they no longer be- 
lieved in, for what Emerson calls "the ignoble 
pleasures of bed and board." But all the vicar 
and curate places in England are filled by men 
only too eager to compromise with conscience 
if by so compromising they can obtain an ease- 
ful life and good position without much work ; 
a vicar's post to-day in England is called a "liv- 
ing/' 



102 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Many years ago, the late Cecil Rhodes told 
me of his intention to bring University stu- 
dents from all the colonies and from America 
and Germany to Oxford. I could not help 
laughing, the scheme seemed to me fantasti- 
cally absurd. Fancy bringing real University 
students down to a high-school like Oxford, 
where men are treated like boys and con- 
strained to go to Chapel in the morning whether 
they wish to or not and to be in their college 
at night by nine or ten o'clock. 

"No, no, Rhodes," I cried, "if you want to do 
good, send hundreds of English students from 
Oxford and Cambridge each year to some 
German University, and come to think of it, you 
might send a hundred members of Parliament, 
too, and half a dozen Ministers. Then, indeed, 
you might in time help to achieve the impossi- 
ble and make of England a modern State." 

Let me once again quote Mr. Price Collier. 
In the chapter on "The Land of Damned Pro- 
fessors" he sums it all up thus : "It remains to 
be said that Germany has trained her whole 
population into the best working team in the 
world. Without the natural advantages of 
either England or America she has become the 
rival of both. Her superior mental training 
has enabled her to wrest wealth from by-prod- 
ucts." . . . And "the best schools in Germany 
he assures us, "are the Army and the Navy." 

Parliament has passed over ten thousand 
laws in England in the last fifty years and not 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 103 

one has ever served as model or example or 
been copied or adopted in any other European 
country. But Mr. Lloyd George has attempted 
lately to introduce into England the whole Ger- 
man system of insurance against accident and 
sickness and Mr. Winston Churchill has tried 
tardily to imitate the German Labor Exchanges 
which give information about employment, but 
here as always what Heine calls "der Fluch der 
Halbheit," or "the curse of the half-way meas- 
ure" is over everything in England and must 
necessarily be till the land is retaken by the 
people and the rule of the oligarchy is ended. 

The whole position of Germany — ^her 
strength and her necessities — was admirably 
defined by Bismarck as early as 1888. The 
speech is known by the great word, "We Ger- 
mans fear God and naught else in the world." 
It is, I think, the greatest speech of the last 
hundred years. It may well be compared with 
Lincoln's noble speech at Gettysburg. Here is 
one most significant passage : 

"The Franco-Russian press within which we 
are squeezed, compels us to hold together, and 
by this pressure our cohesive force is greatly 
increased." And afterwards this : 

"God has placed us where we are prevented, 
thanks to our neighbors, from growing lazy 
and dull." 

And this brings me naturally to the central 
and highest truth of all : every handicap in life 
is an advantage to the strong. It was the stut- 



104 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

tering speech of Demosthenes that made him 
the best of orators; it was the low birth and 
poverty and scanty education of Shakespeare 
that made him our chief of men. It is Ger- 
many's position ringed round by watchful, 
greedy foes that has made Germany great. She 
had to solve the problems of life honestly and 
sincerely or go under, and conscious of her 
strength and believing in knowledge, she solved 
them one after the other, each conquest giving 
her assurance of the next. 

Was she weak? Effort and training would 
make her strong. Was she ignorant? Cheap 
schools and universities would bring knowl- 
edge. Had the old apprentice system broken 
down? Technical schools would better the old 
training. Was she poor? Work and knowl- 
edge would give her wealth. Was her strength 
being drained by the unemployed on the one 
hand and emigration on the other? Well, she 
did her best to provide employment for all and 
as she took care of the poor, emigration ceased 
and the population grew and with growth 
everywhere and success came the result of 
growth, the pride of accomplishment. Her 
envious critics say that Germans are conceited 
and self-assertive, but no nation has ever made 
such progress as Germany has made in the last 
twenty years and are not all strong, successful 
men apt to be conceited? 

One story which I read recently in a New 
York paper gives me the true spirit of modern 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 105 

Germany. An American correspondent in Ber- 
lin wrote saying that what surprised him most 
of all was the high cheerfulness of the people : 
the mother and sisters seeing the son and 
brother off to the war, go smiling and with 
only one word on their lips — gratuliere; the 
girl going to meet her lover who was return- 
ing from the war without his right arm ; "gra- 
tuliere," she cries bravely, " 'twas lost for the 
Fatherland." On every side, no sorrow, no 
tears allowed ; nothing but gratuliere ! 

No wonder Germany stands victorious as 
the first of modern states. It is not her army 
or her schools, or her growth in population or 
in wealth, still less her constitution or her 
methods admirable though many of them are, 
which gives her the laurel-wreath of the world's 
reluctant admiration ; it is the spirit informing 
and inspiring the whole organism, the resolve 
to live greatly or die greatly but not to live 
ignobly or on sufferance as parasite or subject ; 
it is the understanding that this life is our great 
opportunity, that here and now if we men will, 
we can conquer all difficulties and overcome all 
enemies and turn all stumbling-blocks into 
stepping-stones. It is the new-born faith in 
man — the consciousness of man's power and 
the glory of man's achievement — that has made 
Germany great and in spite of all odds and all 
alliances, will continue her in victory ! 



CHAPTER VII 
Paris in the First Weeks of War 

Life in Paris, even in mid-summer, is often 
prolific of tense, dramatic moments, but July, 
1 914, might be called in French fashion — The 
Month of Sensations. 

First of all, the Caillaux trial, ending in the 
acquittal of Madame Caillaux amid demonstra- 
tions of discontent on the Boulevards. 

Then the news that Juarez, the great socialist 
orator and leader had been shot dead when din- 
ing quietly in a little restaurant on the corner 
next his newspaper office: a dreadful crime, 
inexplicable, stupid, making us realize the ap- 
palling savageries that must have gone on in 
the dim backward and abyssm of time and are 
fated to return sporadically in senseless lust of 
slaughter, in murder and assassination! Shall 
we never outgrow the cave-man? 

All the summer through, beneath the surface 
there had been a certain tension: "money was 
tight" bankers said, and no sufficient reason for 
the stringency of the market. 

In those lazy, hot days we had read of the 
murder of the Grand Duke and his wife, as of 
something far off and comparatively unimport- 
ant; then, afterwards, of the Austrian note to 
Servia. 



X06 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 107 

Suddenly, one morning at the Foreign Of- 
fice, I heard that Russia was mobilizing and 
the authorities were evidently anxious. I be- 
gan to grow uneasy, apprehensive; then came 
the German ultimatum to Russia, and then 
crash — war; war, the incredible; war involv- 
ing France? — the mobilization orders pub- 
lished ; the die cast ! Hell let loose ! 

On Sunday, the 2nd of August, Paris was 
declared in a state of siege, put under martial 
law and a military governor, and placarded 
with notices that all foreigners must show their 
passports to the nearest Commissioner of Po- 
lice and obtain his written permission to reside 
in the city or to leave it. Forty-eight hours' 
were given as time-limit and yet we could not 
grasp the appalling fact of a world-war. 

That same evening all Parisians flocked to 
the grand boulevards, from the Pare Monceau 
and the fortifications, from the Latin quarter 
and the aristocratic Boulevard St. Germain: — 
a broad river of people flowing all over the 
street and pavements, men for the most part, 
with set faces and eager eyes, wondering what 
the morrow would bring forth. Practically no 
taxis or carriages ; bands of foreigners marching 
through the crowd proclaiming their allegiance 
to France and their love of the French. First, 
two hundred Roumanians four deep with flags, 
crying at intervals Vive la France!; then a 
band of Italians followed by Spaniards and 
Greeks, a giant leader in national costume. 



io8 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

white petticoat and all — a Berlin, hoo, hoo ! and 
then a small English contingent crying at in- 
tervals — vive la France ! to be answered by the 
Marseillaise taken up by ten thousand voices — 
a certain solemnity in the great chant rising 
and falling in vast waves of sound. 

As we went home by the Place de la Con- 
corde, we debated whether the English would 
cast in their lot with the French. It seemed to 
me almost certain they would ; the trade-rivalry 
was so strong. As we came into the great 
square, we saw all the foreign demonstrators 
massed round the statue of Strassburg, and 
heard the voice of some orator — "France has 
not forgotten her lost children . . . France will 
win them back after forty years — Alsace Lor- 
raine — quand meme." 

We passed by Cleopatra's Needle where the 
guillotine stood during the Terror. Were we 
to see such dreadful days again? The search- 
light from the roof of the Automobile Club 
swept over the great square and lighted up the 
golden dome of the Invalides; what would he 
who sleeps there so quietly say of it all, the 
great Captain and condottiere who has some re- 
sponsibility for these events also, for he made 
it impossible for Frenchmen to believe in de- 
feat. It is ten o'clock when we pass between 
the ramping horses of Marly : — 

Up the long dim road where thundered 

The Army of Italy onward 

By the great pale Arch of the Star. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 109 

Another army came down that same road in 
'70, an army in Pickel-Hauben — Hammer or 
anvil — which will France be? I was full of 
fear. Modern war, like modern business, has 
become immense, depends now not on indi- 
vidual courage and initiative but on organiza- 
tion, and the Germans are as good organizers 
as the French are bad: anything might hap- 
pen, but ... I was anxious, apprehensive, shak- 
en with vague doubts I didn't want to face in 
definite words. 

On Monday morning I awoke with a curious 
feeling of expectancy. I had to see my secre- 
tary, an English girl, off by the train. We 
drove to the Gare du Nord, found it blocked 
by an immense crowd of people hastening to 
leave the capital: sergents-de-ville every- 
where. The only way to leave was through 
Lille and Dunkirk, all the other lines were 
taken up by the mobilization and the two trains 
for Lille already crammed. No more passengers 
to-day : not possible to buy a ticket ; no admit- 
tance even to the station. What was to be 
done? I saw a keen faced employe and spoke 
to him : could he get a young lady on the train 
even without her luggage? I showed him a 
louis. Light came into his eyes : ''Follow me," 
he whispered. We sped round to the back of 
the station to the yard where we could see the 
rails and trains. A man stepped in front of us 
ordering curtly ''Demi-tour" (right about). 

Our guide flourished a yellow piece of paper 



no ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

and said mysteriously, "Un laissez-passer du 
Prefet" (an order to pass — from the Prefect). 
The curt guardian drew back bowing, and we 
hurried across the lines of rails and the girl 
climbed into the overcrowded train and waved 
"good-bye." 

Coming outside the station there was a knot 
in the crowd, and a heated argument : a big fair 
man disputing, pushed his adversary back 
rudely. Suddenly his enemy struck him in the 
face, and in a moment to a cry of "Sale AUe- 
mand," the big man was hurled on his back, 
and the crowd swirled round him, wild figures, 
striking, kicking. In a moment the sergents- 
de-ville rushed in and thrust the crowd back — 
only just in time. The big man was plucked 
to his feet, all limp and bleeding, and half car- 
ried, half pushed down the street with the po- 
licemen all about him, while here and there an 
excited onlooker rushed out and struggled 
through the police to strike at the pale face — 
a grim foretaste. 

Possessing no passport I went to the Ameri- 
can Consulate and got a signed declaration of 
American citizenship which I took to the Com- 
missaire de Police of my quarter. There was 
an immense crowd before the door and a long 
queue to boot of all classes. Automobiles 
ranged on one side of the street, and on the 
other a patient throng. I returned again at 
nightfall when in the semi-darkness a five franc 
piece to the sergent-de-ville gave me priority 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? iii 

of admittance and the required permits, to stay 
in the besieged city. 

The next day was eventful. There were 
hardly any taxi-autos in the street, and the few 
were difficult to get and dear. The Avenue of 
the Champs Elysees was empty: detachments 
of soldiers marching briskly, laughing ; passers 
by on the sidewalks cheering them and now 
and again singing snatches of the Marseillaise. 
Everything gay until we got to the Bank. 
There I was told that I could not draw even 
the money I had deposited a few days before. 
I could have two hundred and fifty francs and 
five per cent of my money, but no more. 

"Why?" I asked. 

The banker shrugged his shoulders: "For 
our protection against a possible run; haven't 
you seen the proclamation?" 

The democratic French Government coming 
to the rescue of the richest corporations of the 
city! An astounding fact! We were soon to 
learn that a similar "moratorium" had been de- 
clared in England, more drastic even, for a 
week the banks could close and give nothing. 
All the powers of organized society to help the 
richest and protect them ! 

It took a Caesar, we said to ourselves, to 
strike in on behalf of the debtors, and remit 
one-third of their debts. Modern Governments 
protect the rich even in democratic France ! 

No more curious, no more significant fact 
will be recorded of this time, and more extra- 



112 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

ordinary still, no one revolted, no one mur- 
mured even; the fiat was accepted universally 
in patient quiet. Think of it, the man you had 
given a thousand pounds to keep for you, whom 
you paid for keeping it, now by law refused to 
give you back your own money, and still men 
talk of justice? No other business protected, 
but money is protected, money that to-day is 
all powerful, a god! , 

We lunched at the Ritz Hotel, but before 
sitting down we were warned by the Manager 
courteously that we must pay cash for the 
lunch, credit having ceased. 

"But the Banks," we say, "won't give us our 
money." Mr. Ellis' eyebrows go up, his hands 
shoot out in deprecation . . . 

"We must pay cash for everything we buy," 
he says. 

"Que voulez vous?" Everyone must pay cash 
except the banker. How delightfully demo- 
cratic ! 

That afternoon I heard that a Maggi shop 
had been wrecked. I knew, of course, that the 
Maggi milk establishments were founded and 
run by Germans, but all German shops were 
not wrecked. I remembered vaguely that a 
couple of years before there had been a scan- 
dal about one of these Maggi shops: a baby 
was said to have died of drinking the milk 
they supplied, milk which had been preserved, 
poisoned if you will, by boracic acid. 

We saw a crowd in the distance, our chauf- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 113 

feur told us it was a Maggi shop. We rushed 
there to see the fun : as we came up, the crowd 
threw themselves on the windows and door, in 
a trice the flood burst in, the shop was gutted 
and the furniture thrown into the street. Look- 
ing at the wild angry faces of the men and 
women, we caught a glimpse of what has been. 
French nature has not altered much in the hun- 
dred years since the Revolution . . . there may 
be mad work yet. 

On Wednesday at about eight o'clock in the 
morning my servant came to tell me that food 
had gone up in price, ham three times as dear 
as it had been the day before and no credit, 
everybody had to pay cash, everybody except 
the Banks! What was to be done? Vague 
memories of the former siege of Paris came to 
me, when dogs were sold dearer than hares, and 
rats even had a price. I sallied forth imme- 
diately to lay in a stock of rice, but I was met 
here, there and everywhere with the fact that I 
could only buy small quantities, even for cash, 
other people being still more prescient than I 
had been. Would Felix Potin the great grocer 
be as miserly? I hurried in a taxi to his head- 
quarters to find that Potin would only sell me 
two pounds of rice though I was a well-known 
and regular customer. The thrill of expectancy 
became tinged with vague anxiety. 

I wished to return by the underground rail- 
way, the "metro" : "No trains for civilians, all 
taken for troops." 



114 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Finding I had to walk, I thought I'd see what 
effect this holding up of food supplies would 
have on the poorer classes, so I went down to 
the Place des Vosges and afterwards to the 
Quartier de St. Antoine. In the poorer quar- 
ters the men and women were in the streets 
in knots and groups, talking and gesticulating 
in the eager vivid French way. Suddenly ahead 
of us a woman came out in the street crying 
and shaking her fist at the shop door she had 
just left. At once the crowd rushed towards 
her, and in another moment they had sacked the 
shop and were hurrying away, this one with 
his arms laden with parcels of sugar, that one 
with something else, a woman with a child 
shrieking over a package she had got hold of. 
Was it another German shop? No! It was a 
French shop, this time, the shop of a French 
grocer, who had asked thirty sous for some su- 
gar priced fifteen sous the day before. 

"Bien fait," was the cry, and there was the 
woman who had begun the revolt, a notable fig- 
ure with her grey hair and strong face set off 
by hard grey eyes and tense mouth. "II a voulu 
voler, lui." — **He wanted to rob, he did," she 
cried. *'Why should he ask more for his sugar 
to-day than he did yesterday, why twice as 
much?" 

I could not help smiling to myself. How long 
would the vaunted "law of the market" stand 
as law in these times? Clearly liberty to ask 
what price you liked for your goods was not 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 115 

going to survive long in France. If the state 
protected the Banker, and held up the money, 
the poor would not allow themselves to be 
robbed to boot barefacedly. 

An hour or two later we learned that an edict 
had been issued by the Military Governor, that 
all eatables were to be sold at the ordinary 
price, which simply meant that from that time 
on we got worse quality. The York ham sud- 
denly became uneatable unless we were willing 
to pay two prices for it. Evidently it is easier 
to help the rich with "moratoria" than the poor 
to food! 

There is a keen sense of justice, however, 
among these fine French people : "EUe a bien 
fait'* was the verdict of the crowd on the wo- 
man who would not be overcharged : — "she did 
quite right !" 

That evening I heard from a high official at 
the Foreign Office that English co-operation 
was certain — the world at war! 

Next morning my barber became interesting. 
He declared that the victory would be imme- 
diate. It appeared there was a M. Turpin, the 
inventor of Melinite, the most famous of explo- 
sive powders. Now M. Turpin, according to 
my barber, had invented an explosive still 
more deadly, when a shell burst which con- 
tained it, its fumes killed everyone within a 
quarter of a mile. "If the Germans get that," 
he said, "they will soon pelt back to Germany." 

When I pressed him with questions, I found 



ii6 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

he knew little or nothing about the famous in- 
ventor; but hoped the more . . . 

Day after day, we heard of hotels closing and 
restaurants shutting up, and theatres stopping, 
though the Theatre Francais went on for about 
a week. Paris was very dull throughout the 
ten days of active mobilization; in a state of 
suspended animation, so to speak, but excited 
and suspicious as one little incident showed. 

I met the postman at the lodge of the Con- 
cierge about seven o'clock one evening. He 
was telling eagerly how the German Manager 
of the Astoria Hotel had been found sending 
wireless telegrams to the Germans at Berlin, 
and how he had been hanged outside his hotel. 
The Hotel Astoria being only a few hundred 
yards away, I hurried there to see if the news 
were true. No sign of hanging, but after some 
time I was told that the Manager had been ar- 
rested, and had been taken away, but no one 
knew what had become of him. 

The first news that came to us from the out- 
side was the invasion of Luxemburg, then the 
Germans' attack on Liege and England's rea- 
sons for joining the Allies. Sir Edward Grey 
put his case excellently. England was com- 
pelled to defend the neutrality of Belgium, an 
engagement of honor, he said. And when Italy 
refused to strike in with Germany on the 
ground that Germany- Austria were the aggres- 
sors, the case seemed complete. Germany was 
to blame. Yet I knew of the envy underlying 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 117 

the English action. Germany had become 
great too quickly, a formidable rival to English 
industry and commerce, and had provided her- 
self with a fleet to boot, that was the real rea- 
son why England drew the sword. 

At first the censored war news was incredi- 
bly good. The Belgians had thrown back the 
Germans. The Germans were pouring through 
Luxemburg; but had been checked at Liege. 
Les braves Beiges had done wonders and there 
was Namur behind, stronger still. Strangers 
shook hands in the street, everyone was confi- 
dent. 

Day after day, news of French successes. 
The French were pushing into Alsace; they 
had taken Mulhouse; a few days later they 
had won the mountain passes, had even reached 
Mount Donon, and were ready to descend into 
the plain before Strassburg. In Lorraine, too, 
they were advancing victoriously: astounding 
news! Were the French then exceptionally 
brave or what could be the explanation of 
their easy success! 

Then less favorable news — the Germans at- 
tacking Liege had entered the town. 

The German Emperor was furious with Eng- 
land it appeared, the German Chancellor too, 
all raging against the hypocrisy of the English, 
the people who had promised solemnly to give 
up Egypt and to leave the Boer republics alone, 
pretending to fight for a promise, for "a scrap 
of paper." Mr. F. E. Smith, lawyer-like, paint- 



ii8 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

ed the lily by declaring that the "one thing 
England stands for in the world is the sanc- 
tity of a promise — England's word, her bond." 

Then blow on blow,— the true truth! The 
Germans had captured Liege, and flung the 
Belgians aside. The Germans had entered 
Brussels, and levied a war fine of ten millions, 
sterling. Even more startling news followed. 

The Belgian Army had fled to Antwerp ; four 
German Armies were pushing through Belgium 
toward the French frontier. 

Then grimmer news still. The French ad- 
vance in Alsace-Lorraine has been stopped, the 
15th Army Corps having run away. It was 
explained that they were made up of recruits 
from the South — from Marseilles, Nice and 
Toulon: — "Those wretched Southerners!" 

Then came the French Censor's untimely 
boast that the enemy was not on French soil, 
and on top of that the news of the fighting at 
Charleroi, and the retirement of the French 
within their border. Then the English were 
flung back from Mons. How many of them 
nobody could say. Some said only two Army 
Corps, others even less. The majority of well- 
informed people seemed inclined to blame the 
English for the reverse, declaring that there 
ought to have been 250,000 English soldiers in 
the line of battle, that the French had told the 
English before the war that less than that num- 
ber would be no good. It was plain that both 
the French and English had been taken by 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? iig 

surprise, outwitted and outnumbered and flung 
back. The Allies are retreating. 

Of course, the Censor told us that all this 
"retiring" was "strategical," but the retiring 
kept on from day to day at great speed. Opti- 
mism vanished, one began to see that the Ger- 
mans were doing great things, sweeping in like 
a tidal wave, carrying everything before them. 
To-day they were at Peronne, next day at St. 
Quentin, the day after south of Compiegne. 
Every day the beaten Allied Army came nearer 
Paris at an extraordinary rate. Usually, 
armies, when unopposed, move at about ten 
miles a day. This army "retiring for strategi- 
cal purposes," was hurrying at the rate of 
twelve or fifteen miles a day. 

Then came knots of English fugitives and 
everybody began to rage against the paucity of 
the news and the foolish verbal euphemisms of 
the English press — all our retirings "strategi- 
cal," practically "victories." We began to 
doubt everything told us. 

The stories of German atrocities grew with 
the German successes and soon became wholly 
incredible : German soldiers putting women in 
front of them when marching to the attack — 
worse than absurd. Lies, we told ourselves, in 
war time become as plentiful as bullets, the 
same English papers that had vilified the Boers, 
declaring that a thousand of them would run 
away from one English company, now called 
the Germans "Huns" and "Savages." 



120 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

I recalled the universal verdict on the con- 
duct of the Germans in the war of '70 ; no vic- 
torious soldiers had ever conducted themselves 
better. How could they have suddenly become 
savages? All armies commit outrages occa- 
sionally ; the English ought to know that better 
than most nations. 

How often is a prize fight fought perfectly 
fairly? Yet there are always watchful eyes to 
condemn unfairness and a referee to disqualify 
for a foul. Like the English the Germans are 
pedants and observe rules better than most 
other races, even the rules of warfare. 

The truth is that ordinary men want to be- 
lieve evil about their enemies, and this credu- 
lity produces atrocities as it once produced 
miracles. The great German people distin- 
guished from the time of Tacitus for their re- 
spect for women, cannot suddenly, have 
changed character. 

News came of the destruction of Louvain. 
There must have been good reason for it, we 
said, just as we found there was a good reason 
fot the running away of the 15th French Army 
Corps. It appeared they had been led to a pla- 
teau and a German airplane had swung over 
and signaled their position. The plateau 
turned out to be a glacis commanded by the 
forts of New Brisach. In a moment there was 
a terrific cross fire sweeping the plateau, a dev- 
ilish hail of shrapnel. The 15th Army Corps 
withered ; no soldiers could have sustained the 



ENCtLAND or GERMANY—? 121 

shock. But their nerve even was not gone, for 
a couple of days later, they fought as bravely 
as ever, under a new Commander. 

All this while Paris was becoming terribly 
depressed. "It has gone badly with us," the 
Parisians said, "and the Censor is afraid to tell 
us the whole truth." This modern policy of 
abolishing war correspondents is the worst pos- 
sible policy. After all, when the war corre- 
spondents were sending messages, war had its 
compensations. We had dramatic stories that 
fired the blood, stories of individual hardihood 
or magnanimity or kindness, now nothing to 
lift the spirit and reconcile one to the horrors 
of the insane butchery. 

All through those dreadful days, the conduct 
and spirit of the Parisians held superbly ; they 
even disciplined themselves to accept whatever 
order was issued. The authorities were fright- 
ened of a popular rising; they had not forgot- 
ten the commune of '70. They ordered the res- 
taurants to be closed at eight. All restaurants 
were closed immediately. They warned against 
crowds coming together in the streets, partic- 
ularly at night. Parisians kept to their houses. 
The French to-day are able to bear the worst. 
"If the Germans can beat us," they said prac- 
tically, "why they must, but we'll fight to the 
end." 

One instance of their cool self-control. It 
became known that the great searchlight that 
played over the Place de la Concorde every 



122 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

night was directed by Germans, the Parisians 
smiled: "They are some good then." In '70 
they would have cried, "Traitors," and gone 
mad. 

Suddenly came the news that the Premier, 
Viviani, had resigned, the other ministers fol- 
lowed suit, a new Ministry of the best of all 
parties was being formed. Delcasse came back 
to power and Ribot; Millerand as Minister of 
War, and two Socialists, one of them de Guesde. 
Clearly the authorities must be scared. The 
new rulers brought out a new proclamation : — 
they wished to unite all French parties in face 
of the enemy ; this was to be a fight to a finish. 
Everyone felt that the idea was a good one, but 
thought that Clemenceau should have been in 
the Ministry. Viviani had offered him a post, 
it appeared, but not sufficient influence, per- 
haps, and his vigorous criticism went on day 
after day. 

Then came a strange and characteristic story. 
Long before this all the motor cars of rich peo- 
ple had been commandeered for the Army. 
Now the story went about that Messimy, the 
late Minister of War, had lent out motor-cars 
to his friends and that pretty girls, actresses 
and music-hall celebrities had been figuring 
about in grand cars commandeered'for the serv- 
ice of the State. The Parisians laughed. The 
story was characteristically French and . held 
more than a kernel of truth. The most practi- 
cal of the commandeered cars were put to use, 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 123 

but all could not be used and a few were doubt- 
less misused in the manner rumored. 

The fact held a prodigous moral for me for I 
knew how the Germans had provided them- 
selves years before with the sort of motor-car 
which they considered most useful. In 1909, I 
think it was, motor-cabs were about to be 
placed for hire on the streets in Berlin and other 
German cities. There was some talk about the 
matter in motoring circles at the time. The 
German police, it appeared, had instituted very 
precise regulations: in order to be licensed to 
ply for hire the motor-cab had to fulfil certain 
conditions : it had to be able to turn almost in 
its own length ; the axles had to be of a certain 
strength; the steering very simple; the con- 
sumption of essence very small. Motorists 
were astonished at some of the conditions. 
The thought never entered our heads that these 
conditions were instituted by the German Gen- 
eral Staff in order to have at any given moment 
an ample supply of cars suitable for military re- 
quirements. At the outbreak of the war the 
German Staff commandeered all these motor- 
cabs and of some 80,000 found 50,000 in good 
condition. These they used in Belgium for the 
quicker transportation of men, food and muni- 
tions of war. No wonder the German forces 
are always more mobile than the French or 
English or Russian forces. Success in war is 
now as in business, a question of foresight and 
organization. 



124 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Towards the end of the month, the first Ger- 
man airplane sailed over Paris and dropped 
two bombs. It did nothing but wound a wo- 
man ; later ones killed women and children ; the 
brutality called out the finest French spirit. 
The practice seemed to me a mistake in judg- 
ment even from the German point of view. 
Why kill non-combatants needlessly? But the 
French accepted it perfectly. "It is free to us 
to do them the same injury," was all they said. 

A few days later, I saw a German Taube 
coming over and heard the dull report of a 
bomb. A crowd of men and women in the 
streets near the Gare St. Lazare all ran towards 
the airplane out of sheer excitement to see 
what would happen, though on all sides was 
heard the crackling of rifles and apparently of 
mitrailleuses from the Eiffel Tower trying to 
bring down the German bird. These bombs 
told us how near the Germans were to Paris, 
and another fact enforced the lesson. 

Next day we ran into an immense crowd of 
people near St. Sulplice. 

"Who are they," we asked. Country people 
coming into Paris with their household goods 
in their hands, fleeing before the Germans. 
That evening there were thousands more of 
them. The various mairies we learned were 
snowed under. But the authorities were en- 
couraged by the press and people to pass these 
poor houseless folk on towards the South ; pas 
de bouches inutiles (no useless mouths) was 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 125 

the order of the day. Belated foreigners made 
ready to leave Paris. 

Then came the news that the Germans had 
cut the line from Paris to Boulogne ; they were 
in Amiens; no more trains that way. Then 
the line from Paris to Dieppe was threatened. 
Soldiers were parked in the Avenue du Bois; 
barricades thrown up on the outer boulevards ; 
all lights even street lamps put out at night. I 
went to see Monsieur Deschanel, President of 
the Chamber of Deputies and Academician as 
well, and had an hour's talk with him and 
learned the true state of affairs. 

Monsieur Deschanel received me in his Pres- 
ident's house just behind the War Office, a 
charming dwelling set back with a great square 
in front and a homely avenue of trees, an abode 
one would have said of ancient peace. M. Des- 
chanel is of middle height, an alert man of about 
forty-five, with a fine head, bright eyes, keen 
expression — a handsome man and a courteous. 
He reminded me at the beginning that for 
twenty years past he had labored constantly to 
form the Triple Entente. I knew his writings 
and admitted his foresight. Though we have 
got war, he argued, and it seems to be going 
against us, we have it under the most favora- 
ble conditions possible. Germany and Austria 
alone against us, and with us England and Rus- 
sia, Belgium too, and the good will of Italy and 
indeed of all civilized peoples. It is those 
dreadful Krupp guns that have made the issue 



126 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

doubtful for the moment; but "only for the 
moment," he was careful to add. 

"Tell me about them," I entreated. 

"We found out about them," he said, "at Na- 
mur. Liege defended itself successfully at first 
against the German attack, but as soon as the 
Germans brought up their heavy guns, the po- 
sition was carried. They are tremendous 
weapons. One instance. Two forts at Namur 
commanded the railway. We all felt sure that 
it would take the Germans a month to reduce 
them and capture Namur. That was the opin- 
ion of our experts. But they got them in one 
afternoon. The fire of the great Krupp guns 
was terrific. The big shells went five or six 
yards into the ground and blew the forts to 
atoms; we have nothing round Paris to stop 
them. 

Altogether, M. Deschanel was depressing. 
He saw, however, the brighter side as well. 

"The decisive factors- are all in our favor," 
he argued. "As we retreat the German line of 
communication gets longer; their power 
shrinks, while ours grows. The English are 
doing all they can; the Russians, too; more 
than we had even hoped. They are more suc- 
cessful than we dreamed they would be so soon. 
We must win finally, but we shall have to 
abandon Paris." 

"Abandon Paris," I cried; "what do you 
mean?" 

"The Government must go to Bordeaux. It 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 127 

is going to-morrow or the next day. All ar- 
rangements have been made." 

"But surely," I said, "Paris will be able to 
defend itself for some weeks or days?" 

"I'm afraid not," he replied. "Those Krupp 
guns have made all forts worthless. The Ger- 
mans will be in Paris in a day or so. Paris is 
lost. Who would have thought it? Who could 
have imagined it?" And he moved about the 
room restlessly. 

"By going to Bordeaux, we want to tell our 
people that we mean to fight to the last: the 
taking of Paris even shall be only an incident 
in the struggle." 

"That is the proper spirit," I could not help 
saying; "the spirit that the French troops 
showed at Malplaquet, the determination never 
to be beaten." 

That same afternoon I saw regiment after 
regiment of French soldiers marching down the 
Champs Elysees. Everywhere sturdy figures 
and cheerful faces; they made even the crowd 
smile with their merry greetings, and in mind 
one could not help contrasting them with that 
army of 181 4 which Napoleon used to such pur- 
pose against the invaders. In 1814 the French 
army was made up almost exclusively of boys 
from fifteen to eighteen and of men from fifty- 
five to seventy. A noticeable fact, too — all 
these conscript lads were already married. 
France had given so many hundreds of tho'US- 
ands of her best to Napoleon that she had only 



128 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

boys and old men left : but the dauntless French 
spirit was there and its habit of blague: its 
power of laughing at itself held in 1814 as in 
1 914. Those conscript boys were called *'Marie 
Louises" in contemptuous reference to the 
Austrian queen. Yet at Montereau a month 
later they swept through the German cavalry, 
and won victory after victory over all their 
foes. Would these stalwart cheery fellows do 
as well ? "They have no Napoleon," I thought, 
"but it is a warlike race." 

Next morning at six o'clock amid a host of 
fugitive French people fleeing for safety to 
England, I saw my women folk off by the last 
train that went through to Dieppe. With 
passes they could not get seats even, but had 
to stand in crowded third class carriages; but 
still they got away, though they were not al- 
lowed to take their trunks, but only hand lug- 
gage. 

I was rejoiced to see them off in safety. The 
train, I learned, would take the whole day to 
get to the coast ; they might be inconvenienced 
and bored; but they would reach peace and 
comfort on the morrow. 

I intended to stay and see the Germans en- 
ter Paris: that would be an historic event of 
fateful significance. It occurred to me that it 
might decide the issue of the war and practi- 
cally end it. For the Germans could then bar- 
gain with the French almost irresistibly: 
"We'll give you back Paris and the north of 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 129 

France," they might say, "even the French- 
speaking communes of Alsace-Lorraine, if 
you'll make a durable peace." How could the 
French resist the bait? Their authorities said 
they would, but I thought it too much to ex- 
pect of human nature. 

The very next day, I think, came the news 
that the Allies had agreed not to make peace 
separately: England beginning to realize her 
danger. 

I wanted to get to the front to see some of 
the actual fighting ; but it was more advisable, 
I decided, for the moment to stay in Paris and 
watch events. 

The next day I ran out to Chantilly in a mo- 
tor-car and had numberless interesting exper- 
iences. The road was crowded with country 
people fleeing as from a fire, laden down with 
their household belongings; all sorts of vehi- 
cles, too, crowded the pave, from children's 
go-carts piled high with odds and ends to hay- 
wagons packed as for emigration. Here and 
there in the crowd knots of English and French 
soldiers who had got separated from their regi- 
ments ; many of the English in especial, fagged 
out by rapid marching and not enough rest — 
one and all complaining of want of sleep — no 
time to sleep. 

Frenchmen of the middle-class related how 
they had buried their silver and abandoned 
their houses. One told us of receiving the even- 
ing before a band of French soldiers among 



130 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

whom were a couple of English Tommies ; none 
of them had washed for a week, or had had any 
sleep. He took them into his barn and shook 
down hay for them. Before he had finished 
they were all asleep and this morning they 
washed. "You should have seen the dirt- 
poor devils — war is hell!" 

Everyone I asked had the same answer. 
"The Germans outnumbered us, outflanked us ; 
we had to get back as hard as we could." 
What would be the next move? 

I felt certain Paris would be taken; but I 
couldn't understand the Germans giving the 
beaten enemy even one day to rest and recup- 
erate. But all that day Von Kluck appeared 
to be resting on his laurels. Next morning in 
Paris I heard that Von Kluck was sweeping 
round to the South and East. What on earth 
for? Everyone, who knew anything, was 
amazed. Some spoke of Paris being too strong 
to take, too big to occupy. Then we heard all 
sorts of wild explanations, none of which would 
have satisfied a child. 

Next day or the day after, we heard that 
Von Kluck with his staff was at Sezanne many 
miles to the East and South of Paris. His 
whole army of over 250,000 men had swept 
around Paris, leaving the city untouched, un- 
masked, unwatched! What did it all mean? 

Again I got out in a friend's motor-car and 
ran down towards Coulommiers where we were 
headed off by French troops and sent back. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 131 

One thing was certain : Paris was not going to 
be taken. The Germans had given up the 
greatest prize in the war! What was the ex- 
planation ? I had to wait weeks before I heard 
the true story, which I shall tell later. 

The moral of events, so far, seems clear. The 
German organization for war was enormously 
superior to the French as everyone should have 
guessed it would be. Anyone who knows the 
French post office, knows how inferior it is in 
organization to the German post office. 

The French organization of industry is in- 
ferior even to the English. The French people 
are greater individualists, less disciplined than 
the English people, therefore, the State organi- 
zations are not so efficient. 

M. Barres, the Deputy and Academician, 
writing in the "Echo de Paris" the other day, 
admitted that their weakness in organization 
was the French "sin against the Spirit" which 
would have to be altered in the future. 

And the English post office is not so efficient 
as the German post office, is indeed a mere copy 
of the German as organized by Herr Stepan. 
Accordingly, German mobilization was far 
more efficient than French mobilization; the 
French, too, were hypnotized by the idea of 
Alsace-Lorraine and the war of '70, and sent 
all their best troops to that frontier. They did 
not foresee the attack through Belgium, and 
even when Liege was taken they were slow to 
wheel about and face the real invasion by Char- 



132 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

leroi and Maubeuge and Longwy. They were 
manifestly not prepared to resist properly the 
attack through Belgium. They had been out- 
manoeuvered. 

Never before has such a feat of arms been 
accomplished. In a month the Germans tossed 
the Belgians aside, drove back the English 
and French, and with unparalleled speed rushed 
right to the gates of Paris ! Why they did not 
take Paris remains to be explained. One thing 
seems pretty sure: had the Russians not acted 
with at least equal promptitude, it seems prob- 
able that the tidal wave of German invasion 
would have swept over Paris and taken all the 
strong places on the Eastern frontier as well. 
But how came the Russians to be so ready? 
Their mobilization must have begun months 
before we heard of it. 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Censorship and Its Effects 

For the first time in history hostile forces 
have been opposed over a battle front of some 
three hundred miles and neither side has gained 
any definite advantage in seven months of con- 
tinual fighting. There must be some explana- 
tion of this extraordinary occurrence. 

It is true that outflanking is impossible, for 
one end of the far flung line rests on Switzer- 
land, a neutral country, and the other on the 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 133 

sea. It is the fact, too, that the numbers of 
men engaged on each side are greater than ever 
before ; but such a deadlock has never presented 
itself in the past even on a small scale and it 
is therefore certain that some new factor or 
factors must have entered into the usual war 
problem and altered its very nature. 

The battle of Waterloo, like that of Grave- 
lotte, lasted a day; some encounters in the 
Russo-Japanese war were not decided for sev- 
eral days ; but it is unheard of to get no result 
in seven months' struggling. 

What is the explanation of the deadlock? 

The only new factors so far as I can see are 
the action of airplanes and the fact that the 
war news now is being censored. 

The first of these, the action of air-planes, 
may be summarily dismissed. In ordinary 
weather these aerial scouts inform Generals of 
any new massing of troops or any concentra- 
tion of force on a large scale, and so tend to 
simplify strategy and tactics. But the simpli- 
fication of war must tend rather to increase 
than diminish boldness in attack. It is the un- 
known that paralyzes action, and so the knowl- 
edge brought by air-planes would be apt to has- 
ten rather than retard the final issue. 

At first blush the censorship would seem to 
have still less than air-planes to do with the 
fighting ; how can the censor be made responsi- 
ble for the perpetual stalemate of drawn bat- 
tles? 



134 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

First let us recall how the censor came into 
being and what his true function is. It hap- 
pened, I believe, once in the Franco-German 
war of 1870 that news had been telegraphed by 
a correspondent with the German army to Lon- 
don and from there rewired to Paris and the 
front in time to convey valuable information to 
the French commander in the field. Clearly 
such an occurrence is very exceptional and 
could easily be guarded against and rendered 
impossible. 

In the South African war, where no similar 
occurrences were to be feared, the censorship 
was made rigorous and the war correspondent 
practically muzzled for the first time. The co- 
lonial correspondents complained bitterly of 
the want of reason in the restrictions put upon 
them ; some of the London papers followed suit. 
The worst blunders were ascribed to the fact 
that the censor was Lord Stanley, a man of 
quick temper and an overweening sense of his 
own importance ; and it was hoped that a new 
censor would be more reasonable. But after 
Lord Kitchener had taken the place of Lord 
Roberts and the Boer army had been dispersed, 
when there was no longer any excuse whatever 
for censoring the news, every message was cen- 
sored more rigorously than ever. 

What was the reason of this new departure? 
The newspapers grumbled ; the correspondents 
threw up their places and returned home in in- 
dignation. Lord Kitchener, however, stuck to 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 135 

his methods; and it seems to me that there is 
only one possible explanation of his resolve; 
he didn't intend to have his Paardebergs de- 
scribed or his policy of ''block houses" and 
"concentration camps" freely criticised, and 
from his point of view he was justified. 

To the muzzling of the British press must be 
ascribed the fact that he returned from the war 
with reputation hardly diminished, though he 
had been beaten to a standstill in the only bat- 
tle he had fought, and beaten in spite of an 
overwhelming superiority in numbers. Be- 
sides, he had utterly failed with 400,000 men at 
his command to round up or drive out the hand- 
ful of Boers, with amateur commanders, who 
kept the field against him for over a year. 

The full significance of this experience will 
be seen later. It is enough now to state that 
the English were the first people who, without 
any reason whatever, established a censorship 
so complete that only such news was allowed 
to be published as suited the commander in 
chief at the front. 

The dislike of free speech is one of the most 
curious and most characteristic facts in later 
English history; it is found all through their 
home policy. By a series of the most astonish- 
ing libel laws ever framed they have muzzled 
their whole press and have driven truth out of 
public life. They have choked all valuable crit- 
icism to silence ; their newspapers can do noth- 
ing but praise. There is now no such thing 33 



136 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

free speech possible in Great Britain. The 
American war-correspondent, Mr. Emerson, 
recently informed me that of 87 cablegrams 
sent by him from Berlin in the early months of 
the war, to New York papers, 83 were sup- 
pressed altogether by the English censor, and 
of the four allowed to go through, one was so 
altered that the meaning of it was entirely 
changed. Manifestly, the English regard the 
truth as likely to injure even Americans. The 
rigorous censoring of war correspondence has 
come from England and is a peculiarly English 
trait. 

In the war waged between Turkey and 
Greece war correspondents were reinstated to 
a certain extent and they did excellent service 
in restraining Turkish vindictiveness and bet- 
ter work still when they exposed the atrocities 
practised by the Japanese in their war with 
China. 

Probably for this reason in the Russo-Japan- 
ese war the Japanese took a leaf out of the 
English book and turned all the war corre- 
spondents into humble eulogists of the general 
officers and commanders in the field. Criticism 
ceased, fair statement was taboo, hymns of 
praise and paeans of eulogy were alone granted 
the privilege of transmission. We learned that 
the Japs were braver than any Europeans, more 
learned than Germans, more considerate than 
Sisters of Mercy. In fact, if it had not been for 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 137 

the Japanese themselves their soldiers might 
have been thought worthy of beatification. 

As it is they have told us with what unholy 
glee they torpedoed unsuspecting Russian war- 
ships in the harbor of Port Arthur before it 
was possible for their foes to have heard of the 
declaration of war and by this exultant treach- 
ery, they confirmed the opinion formed of them 
when in the first siege of Port Arthur they 
were proved to have ripped open pregnant wo- 
men and skewered babies on their bayonets. 
It was the European war correspondents, and 
notably the English, who first exposed and so 
put an end to such devilish cruelties. 

At present, thanks to the English hatred of 
citicism, humanity has no such efficient pro- 
tection. It is one of the strange anomalies 
of our life that the individual Englishman may 
be trusted to tell the truth more exactly than 
most other men if he is allowed to, whereas his 
Government hates truth more than any other 
Government and has by law turned the speak- 
ing of truth into a crime. This is one of the 
consequences of government by oligarchy in 
these democratic days. 

The dislike of criticism and the hatred of 
truth embodied in the modern censorship of 
war correspondents have the most serious re- 
sults on the efficiency of armies in the field. 
Let me now try to prove this. 

First of all, war is not a difficult or profound 



138 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

science and in times of peace the vast majority 
of Generals are men of the most mediocre abil- 
ity. Both these propositions must be proved 
and must be regarded as axioms before the ef- 
fect of modern censorship can be understood. 

All other professions and trades are better 
officered than the fighting services. Men often 
poke fun at the pret-nsions of surgeons ; but no 
one without long study would dream of trying 
to cut out stone in the bladder or cataract in 
the eye, for example. Even a man of the high- 
est and most extraordinary genius would ad- 
mit that an ordinary surgeon would beat him 
at such a feat. But again and again civilians 
have gone into the field, taken over the com- 
mand of armies and beaten experienced and 
war-worn Generals at their own game. 

Cromwell had never been trained to arms; 
yet he beat Gen. Leslie and Prince Rupert, who 
had European reputations; Clive and Charles 
XII had scarcely seen a blow struck in anger, 
yet they proved themselves commanders of the 
first class, as did Frederick the Great after a 
single battle. In no other profession could an 
unlearned outsider beat the masters of the 
craft. 

This is the most astounding fact in the his- 
tory of all war. Five hundred years ago Swiss 
levies led by untrained civilians beat the best 
troops in Europe commanded by renowned 
Generals; in our own times De Wet, Delarey 
and Botha with untrained Boer farmers took 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 139 

the field against trained British arxnies and beat 
them again and again at odds of three to one ; 
the farmers at New Orleans in 1814 found no 
difficulty in defeating veteran English soldiers 
who had won fame by driving Napoleon's arm- 
ies out of the Peninsula. 

These facts can only be understood when we 
realize that war, as Tolstoy tried to show, is 
not a science at all, but a very simple business, 
and that most Generals are utter mediocrities, 
without insight or initiative. 

How does a man become a General in times 
of peace? By obeying rules unhesitatingly, 
whether good or bad, and by an amiable "sub- 
servience," shall we call it, or servility? to his 
superiors in rank. 

But these are the attributes of mediocrity. 
In any ordinary business these lickspittling 
qualities help a man on, but he is always being 
judged by results as well. The head of a de- 
partment store knows by the results whether 
his assistant is a good salesman and organizer 
or not, but the Captain or Colonel in times of 
peace is subjected to no test whatever. 

Another point to be borne in mind. Genius 
is notoriously undisciplined and indocile. The 
man of commanding ability in any walk of life 
always revolts and breaks out a new way for 
himself. He has no chance with the mediocrity 
in climbing slowly grade by grade where he 
cannot prove himself. Genius therefore leaves 
the army. War is the simplest of games, and in 



140 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

times of peace and, indeed, in spite of such ex- 
perience as is afforded by short wars the vast 
majority of Generals are almost inevitably men 
of most mediocre ability. 

That is the simple reason why commanding 
officers usually detest criticism and are de- 
lighted to guard themselves against it by rig- 
orous censorship. Now consider how this af- 
fects the conduct of war. Put yourself in the 
place of the mediocrity who has become com- 
mander-in-chief of an army in the ordinary 
way. 

First of all your General French or Joffre is 
usually far past his best ; he may indeed be 70, 
like General Pau; he is almost certain to be 
well over 60, like General Joffre and French; 
age-worn and cautious. Besides, being a me- 
diocrity he wants first of all to keep his job; 
he is conscious at bottom of his own weakness 
and shortcomings and accordingly he risks 
nothing and adventures as little as possible. 
With such cautious leaders you have the result 
now before you in France, a complete dead- 
lock. 

But rigorous censorship has even worse ef- 
fects than this. There is nothing mediocrity 
and age dislike so much as genius and bold ini- 
tiative. The pompous, footling old General se- 
lects his most mediocre assistants for praise. 
He thus protects his own weakness from dis- 
covery by making his successors even feebler 
than himself. And so you have French prais- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 141 

ing Smith-Dorrien and Joffre lauding Pau — 
shallow echoing shallow. 

But after all it will be said the German army 
is suffering from the same disease. They, too, 
have established a censor, but no one who 
compares can doubt the fact that the German 
news is infinitely fuller and fairer than English 
or French news. The German papers have 
published detailed accounts of German defeats 
or checks. In consequence of frank criticism 
Generals have been retired. Even the great 
name of Von Moltke has not protected him 
from condemnation. 

The Germans have allowed even American 
correspondents, like James Bennett and Irvin 
Cobb, to go everywhere they liked in "devas- 
tated Belgium" and tell the truth as they saw 
it unconstrained. Consequently we have Mr. 
Bennett proving that Sir A. Conan Doyle's ac- 
count of German "atrocities" and German 
"murders'* are mostly foul imaginings. Mr. 
Bennett has seen whatever he wanted to see 
without let or hindrance, and he shows that the 
stories of the wrecking of Louvain, for exam- 
ple, are wild exaggerations; more than three- 
quarters of the town standing to-day uninjured. 

Think of the ineptitude which made the Eng- 
lish censor, F. E. Smith, famous. The message 
came from a correspondent with the English 
force early in August. It ran : 

"We landed at (name of place cen- 
sored) and were taken seventy miles up the 



142 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

River (name of river censored) to — 

(name of place censored)." 

Evidently F. E. Smith knew nothing about 
the Seine. He made his tenure of office memo- 
rable by blocking out the names of the towns 
on picture postcards. 

The German censor is not so ignorant or 
so anxious to avoid the truth. Moreover, the 
Germans have constant criticism from above — 
the Kaiser is worth a good many war corre- 
spondents to them, and so is the Crown Prince. 
The princes, too, of Bavaria and Saxony, Baden 
and Wurtemburg are not mere onlookers. The 
criticism of Vv^ar correspondents is not so nec- 
essary to the Germans as it is to the Allies; 
yet one finds frank criticism of German Gen- 
erals in German papers and frank exposure of 
blunders and reverses such as would not be 
tolerated for a moment in any English or even 
French paper. 

From the beginning the German leaders have 
shown some initiative and attack. They have 
been trained in the school of Moltke ; they have 
inherited his spirit and precepts. Besides, in 
every department of German life, even in the 
German army, there is a desire for efficiency, 
a longing not only to keep your job, but to do 
it. The German captains have proved them- 
selves the superiors of the French and Eng- 
lish captains. Now having won more than they 
want or even desire to keep, it is the cue of the 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 143 

German Generals to stand on the defensive and 
let the Allies break themselves in attack. 

All through these last six months Joffre and 
French should have been attacking night and 
day resolutely ; bad weather is their friend and 
ally; they are fighting at home; behind them 
millions of French homes, French love, French 
tendance. Behind the Germans a hostile peo- 
ple and the coldest of cold comfort. Still the 
French and English do nothing; they are as 
plainly outgeneralled now as they were at the 
beginning of the war. Joffre and French would 
long ago have been detected and exposed and 
relieved of their positions if they had been sub- 
jected to the criticism of young and independ- 
ent war correspondents. 

The French came too late to Charleroi, the 
English too late to Mons, and both with ludi- 
crously insufficient forces; they were both 
whipped immediately and beaten back; they 
couldn't even put up a decent fight or hold the 
Germans for a day anywhere. They were 
driven like sheep back and back to Paris. 

Then, it is true, came a German check, which 
hasn't yet been explained, or rather, which has 
been explained, thanks to the censorship, alto- 
gether wrongly, and turned to praise of Joffre, 
French and company, who certainly never de- 
served the honor. If you doubt that, consider 
what they have done in the last six months. 
What has become of Joffre-French's celebrated 



144 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

offensive movement which was to take place 
early in December? 

Now Kitchener talks of the war as about to 
begin in May? That is, he hopes that in May 
the Russians will take the offensive in over- 
whelming numbers. But he is doomed to dis- 
appointment in May as in December. 

The first Russian armies are far the best, the 
hordes that can be brought up next May will 
be incredibly stupid and only half trained, 
whereas the Germans will maintain their high 
standard of efficiency. The Germans will prob- 
ably beat the Russians next summer more eas- 
ily than they have beaten them hitherto; they 
will certainly hold them with a carefully 
chosen line of intrenchments, as they now hold 
the French and English. 

What then is to be done ? The best hope for 
the Allies is to get rid at once of the censor- 
ship which is needed to protect English com- 
mercial "graft" and the English oligarchy who 
only want to live without work on other men's 
labors. 

With the advent of real war correspondents 
a breath of fresh air would come into the whole 
conduct of the war. 

Genius welcomes criticism; the more the 
merrier, the higher the better. "Come look 
what I'm doing," it cries fearlessly, knowing 
that truth must help it and that in an open 
struggle between truth and falsehood, truth has 
nothing to fear. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 145 

Efficiency longs for criticism ; the more com- 
petent the better; it is only inefficiency that 
dreads and avoids it; dishonesty that seeks to 
stifle it. 

The English, as is their modern wont, are 
playing ostrich; with their heads in the bush 
they hope everything from time and the chap- 
ter of accidents. Meanwhile their much be- 
praised organizer, Lord Kitchener, has come to 
grief as I predicted he would. In spite of their 
;vealth the English are so scantily supplied with 
munitions of war that "The Times" talks of the 
"scandal," and attributes the shortage to the 
"muddling" and want of "ordinary foresight" in 
the "professional soldiers" in charge of the war- 
office. However, as the war is not being waged 
in England, they can regard the sufferings of 
the French and Belgians with that comparative 
equanimity which La Rochefoucauld describes. 

But France should tear off the blinkers ; war 
is no game of blind man's buff ; one-twelfth of 
their country is in the hands of the invaders, 
and a very rich twelfth. Already it is calcu- 
lated that the devastation of these northern 
departments has cost France fifty milliards of 
francs, or ten times as much as the war indem- 
nity levied by the Germans in 1871. Ten bil- 
lions of dollars they have already had to pay 
for their want of efficient organization and their 
credulous trust in the promised help of England 
and the silly censorship. If they follow the evil 
example of England and keep out the frank 



146 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

criticism of war correspondents their weak 
generals may yet cost them Paris, and perhaps 
even more. 

How long will this brave and quick-witted 
people trust to darkness and blind guides when 
their one hope is in their quick, clear vision of 
the actual. Let them leave England to official 
lies, and the official belief "we shall muddle 
through as usual somehow or other"; they 
must face the light and truth ; their one chance, 
I will not say of victory, but of freeing French 
soil from the invader, is to know the facts and 
face the facts fairly, relying on themselves 
alone. 

Why should the French democracy imitate 
the corrupt methods by which the English and 
Russian oligarchies maintain themselves as 
perpetual pensioners of the State, parasites on 
the body politic? 

I am delighted to see that Clemenceau, one 
of the ablest heads in France, is now leading 
the newspaper revolt against the idiotic cen- 
sorship so beloved by the Generals. Clemen- 
ceau is beginning to realize that Joffre, French 
and company are not likely to do much if left 
to their own devices. But it will be very diffi- 
cult, indeed, for the French to win truth to their 
side and use it while their allies, the English, 
are determined to cover all their sins of omis- 
sion and commission with silence. 

The reign of the mediocrities has been estab- 
lished, and as there are a thousand mediocri- 



. ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 147 

ties for every man of genius or lover of effi- 
ciency, the reign of stupidity is likely to con- 
tinue. 

Poor Clemenceau has already found out how 
strong it is: he is a patriot to the backbone, 
who loves France with all his heart and mind 
and soul; but alas! he is a man of real talent 
and unselfishness; he would not accept a post 
in the French Ministry though it was pressed 
upon him and accordingly the Vivianis and 
Millerands suppressed his paper "L'Homme 
Libre" (The Freeman) in the second month of 
the war because they couldn't stand frank crit- 
icism. It is true Clemenceau immediately 
brought out "L'Homme Enchaine" (The Muz- 
zled Man) and went on boldly ; but England is 
behind the Vivianis and the Frenches and the 
Joffres and England is resolved that no breath 
of truth shall dissipate the heavy mists that 
now shroud the battle line from view. 

CHAPTER IX 

Who Will Win in the War? 
Why Von Kluck Did Not Take Paris. 

Nearly all Americans are prepossessed in fa- 
vor of the Allies; but in spite of this, in the 
back of their minds, so to speak, there is a cer- 
tain fairness and a desire to know the truth. 

On certain matters they are already begin- 
ning to be at sharp variance with the English. 



148 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Thanks to American correspondents who have 
been allowed by the Germans comjlete free- 
dom to see and state the facts ; correspondents 
of ability and character like James Bennett and 
Irvin Cobb, Americans no longer believe in the 
baser stories of German atrocities and German 
vandalism. Mr. Bennett in particular does not 
hesitate to characterize the wild imaginings of 
Conan Doyle as "slanderous inventions," false- 
hoods bred of credulity. 

When we all believe with Messrs. Bennett, 
Thompson, McCutcheon and Cobb that the 
Germans have waged war like civilized human 
beings, that their soldiers have been "severe 
but not ruthless" in Belgium even when dealing 
with francs-tireurs, and have shown the ordi- 
nary inhabitants almost invariably kindness 
and courtesy "and have taken all care not to de- 
stroy cathedrals or works of art," we are com- 
ing near the frame of mind which will allow us 
to see facts fairly and to weigh scrupulously 
the various factors which make for failure and 
success in this war. Up to the present Ameri- 
cans have believed that the Germans "wiped 
out" Louvain and maliciously or callously de- 
stroyed the Cathedral of Rheims. When they 
understand that they have been misled in these 
matters they will be more ready to reconsider 
their belief that the issue of the war is certain 
and that "the Allies must win." For belief 
comes from the heart rather than from the 
head; our feelings of sympathy and repulsion 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 149 

color our thoughts and lend a bias to what 
should be purely intellectual deductions. 

Roughly speaking, Americans have decided 
that the Allies must win because they outnum- 
ber the Germans and Austrians by three to one 
and because their material resources are 
greater in much the same ratio. The Germans, 
they say, gained an advantage in the beginning 
by virtue of superior organization, but their 
first drive failed to reach Paris and ended in 
the defeat of the Marne and in time they must 
be worn down and forced to give in. 

I shall consider these reasons in due order, 
but there is one new factor in this war which 
tends to justify the ordinary American belief 
and I shall therefore take it first. 

Veteran soldiers are not thinkable in modern 
war. When armies fought in summer time and 
in winter rested and recuperated in snug quar- 
ters, soldiers gradually became seasoned veter- 
ans ; but now that fighting is continuous winter 
and summer alike, and even by night as well as 
by day, man*s nerves soon get frayed out. 
Flesh and blood cannot support the strain of 
the perpetual struggle and hardships, to say 
nothing of the mad excitement, the unexpected 
attacks of airplanes, the nerve shattering noise 
of shells containing 800 pounds of high explo- 
sives and all the terrible sights, sounds and 
smells of modern war. 

A German staff officer who had been through 
the siege of Paris in 1870 confessed to me once 



150 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

that the German army round Paris had grown 
stale before the capital surrendered. Fresh 
regiments had to be brought up to "stiffen," as 
he expressed it, the fighting line. This stiffen- 
ing process is now more than ever necessary. 

The limit of human endurance is soon 
reached, fresh troops are continually needed on 
both sides to strengthen the attack, and as the 
Allies, it is thought, can more easily find new 
forces it seems reasonable to expect that they 
must ultimately be victorious. 

This reasoning, it seems to me, is founded 
on a misconception. The chief advantage which 
the Germans possessed over their adversaries, 
according to the Kaiser, was speed of mobili- 
zation. Their main desire was, of course, to 
wage war in the enemies' countries and thus 
inflict the chief loss and damage on their foes. 
The German plan, therefore, was in the first 
weeks of war to overrun Belgium and invade 
France and Russian Poland in such a way as 
to be able to hold portions of both countries 
almost indefinitely, and this project was car- 
ried out with more or less success. 

The common American belief that Generals 
Joffre and French put their heads together and 
stopped the German drive at the gates of Paris 
and threw the invader back defeated is mani- 
festly mistaken. The fact is that the German 
drive did not stop at Paris, but turned aside 
from it and continued on down to the south 
and east. Von Kluck reached Coulommiers 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 151 

and Sezanne before halting and the question 
imposes itself, why did he turn aside from 
Paris ? 

I was in Paris during those early days of 
September and followed the movements of the 
armies as closely as possible. The first thing 
that put me on the right scent was a talk I had 
with M. Deschanel, who told me the Govern- 
ment was on the point of leaving Paris and go- 
ing to Bordeaux. 

Clearly, the French Government wouldn't 
have gone to Bordeaux had they not believed 
that Paris would be taken or was in imminent 
danger of being taken. Why then did Von 
Kluck spare the capital and rush past to the 
south and east? 

As no satisfactory explanation of the fact has 
yet been offered I must give the one which I 
pieced together for myself from a multitude of 
data derived from German papers as well as 
from French and believe to be true. 

Five German armies of over 150,000 men each 
and supported by as many more, were devoted 
to the invasion of France; four were to come 
through Belgium, and the fifth, commanded by 
the Crown Prince in person, was to enter by 
the corner near Luxemburg or through the 
Duchy. The Crown Prince decided to skirt 
Luxemburg and found in his path the frontier 
village of Longwy and its antiquated defences. 
But the commander of Longwy was a French- 
man of the heroic sort; at the outset he re- 



152 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

solved to defend Longwy as if the outcome of 
the whole war depended on its holding out to 
the last hour. 

Accordingly, he worked day and night min- 
ing the ground for miles in front of the fort 
where he ensconced himself like an old spider 
waiting for the flies. When the Crown Prince's 
men entered the field to the northeast of the 
village he blew up some thousands of them and 
the rest bolted back in confusion; when they 
attacked from the southeast the same thing 
happened ; in fine, Longwy held up the Crown 
Prince and his army of 150,000 men for ten 
days ; ten days during which he heard of noth- 
ing but German successes: how Liege was 
taken and Namur and Brussels put to ransom. 
But though he raged at being stopped he could 
not help congratulating the French commander 
of Longwy on his magnificent defence. 

Meanwhile Gen. Pau in command of the 
main French army in Alsace-Lorraine had at 
length become aware that Longwy was doing 
wonders and deserved support; he detached a 
couple of army corps to help in its defence. 
They came too late to save the village; but 
curiously enough they did more and better 
than if they had arrived in time. 

When the Crown Prince was preparing to 
advance after the surrender of Longwy he 
was told of this new French force; here was 
the opportunity he desired; he threw himself 
on the two French corps, overwhelmed them 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 153 

and drove them from the field. Naturally, they 
retreated along the road to the south by which 
they had come and the impetuous Prince fol- 
lowed hotfoot, striking, striking, hoping to an- 
nihilate, and at length got down to the south 
of the Argonne forest between Verdun and 
Toul to St. Mihiel. 

There Pau with the flood of reinforcements 
coming from the south stopped and held him 
and fortified the forest in his flank and rear. 
The fifth German army was caught as in a 
trap. By this time Von Kluck and the first 
three armies had got within striking distance 
of Paris ; but the fourth German army had been 
delayed at Maubeuge and the fifth German 
army was enmeshed at St. Mihiel. 

A German Sedan was not to be thought of; 
Von Kluck was ordered by the Emperor to ex- 
tricate the Crown Prince ; that was why he left 
Paris on his right and drove down to the south- 
east to Coulommiers and Sezanne. By this 
movement Pau's enveloping army was endan- 
gered and had to retreat. The Crown Prince 
was free. At once Von Kluck retreated to the 
line just north of Soissons-Rheims, which had 
already been chosen and partially entrenched. 

The so-called victory of the Allies on the 
Marne, of which so much has been made, was 
no victory in any real sense of the word; the 
Germans had to retire to a defensible line and 
had begun to retire before the French and Eng- 
lish attacked. In fact the French and English 



154 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

had to rest before they could think of attacking. 

For the last six months the Germans have 
held without much difficulty all Belgium, one- 
twelfth of France and a great slice of Russian 
Poland; everywhere they are in a position of 
vantage, for though the English hold the seas 
they have not been able so far to blockade Ger- 
many or to cripple her for want of necessary 
war material, such as copper, nitrate or rubber. 
German finances, too, are in a far better posi- 
tion than any one would have predicted they 
would be nine months ago. German 3 per cents 
which stood at 80 at the beginning of the war, 
are now about 68, while English Consols which 
stood above 70 then are now about 62. For 
various reasons this is not as valuable an in- 
dex as it would be if the stock exchanges had 
been left free. 

Is there any reason for thinking that the next 
six months, or twelve months, or forty months, 
for that matter, will bring about a reversal of 
the verdict? 

The truth is the Germans have succeeded so 
far because their organization was and is far 
superior to that of any or of all the Allies. And 
most people overlook the fact that this superi- 
ority remains constant, or indeed, increases by 
comparison as time goes on. 

The German war machine is so perfect that 
the next six or eight millions of soldiers will 
be just as efficient as the four or five millions 
who have borne the brunt up to now. As the 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 155 

Belgian and Servian forces have practically 
been used up, the superiority of the Germans 
in the field is likely to be maintained. The 
truth is the French and Germans are the only 
forces in the field whose efficiency may increase 
rather than diminish. 

But other factors may be brought into the 
account, which will alter everything. 

The advent of Turkey into the field has al- 
ready affected the conditions of the war and is 
at once a tribute to the splendid fighting power 
of the Germans and the cleverness of German 
diplomacy. The Turks believed that the Ger- 
mans were going to win or they would never 
have imperilled their very existence by begin- 
ning hostilities. Of course it was clear to them 
that if the Allies won they would sooner or 
later be at the mercy of Russia, and a dozen 
wars have taught them what they would have 
to expect from the Slav. 

The support of Turkey brought some imme- 
diate relief to Germany ; Turkey is threatening 
Russia in the Black Sea and in Asia Minor and 
the English in Egypt, and both countries have 
had to defend themselves against this new foe. 

Moreover, if Germany has been able to de- 
tach Turkey from her secular allegiance to 
Great Britain, why should she not also win the 
active support of Italy? The value of Italy has 
gone up enormously in the last three months; 
Italy can put a million of men in the field at 
once and support that million with another mil- 



156 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

lion of reservists, and her fleet, too, is worth 
considering. 

Her participation in the war on the side of 
Germany would equalize the struggle. The 
question for Italy is. Which of the combatants 
will give the higher price? Italy wants Trieste 
and the Trentino from Austria, and Savoy and 
Nice from France. Austria is unwilling to part 
with the great port of Trieste and France can- 
not bear to give up Savoy and Nice, which are 
now French to the heart. Hence the neutrality 
of Italy. 

But how long will Italy sit on the fence? All 
the factors here are in favor of the Allies: 
Italy hates Austria and would much prefer 
Trieste and the Trentino and ports in Albania 
to Savoy and Nice; Italy has more to fear too 
from the fleets of the Allies bombarding her 
coast towns than from an invasion by Austria. 
To judge by the outbursts of popular feeling 
in Italy, it is probable that Italy will take the 
field against her former allies; but even this 
stab would not be necessarily decisive. 

Whatever Italy does or refrains from doing 
the price of the remaining neutral States is go- 
ing up steadily. On which side of the fence 
will Bulgaria come down? And Rumania and 
Greece? It is already probable that all these 
States will be drawn into the maelstrom. The 
sympathy of the Slav States should be pro- 
Russian, just as the feeling of the Greeks is no- 
toriously on the side of Great Britain, but sym- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 157 

pathy in this extremity may yield to self-inter- 
est. On which side then will Bulgaria and Ru- 
mania and Greece enter the conflict? 

It is probable, I think, that Bulgaria will 
fight on the side of Austria and Rumania on 
the side of Russia, while Greece will oppose 
Turkey in order to get part of Macedonia and 
the Ionian Islands from the Triple Entente. 

And when these States are drawn into the 
quarrel, the value of Holland will have in- 
creased to such an extent that her neutrality 
will become almost impossible. Germany and 
Great Britain will bid against each other for 
her support, and no one can say how she will 
decide; or rather everything will depend on 
what course the war takes in 191 5. 

Nine months ago no American would have 
given a fig for the hope of ultimate success 
cherished by the Germans; their forethought 
and capacity have been steadily improving their 
position, till now it is beginning to be seen 
that they have more than a chance of drawing. 
If Italy remains neutral, a German defeat is 
most improbable. 

It is admitted now that the German fleet may 
manage to injure British commerce and send 
up the price of food in Great Britain to famine 
prices, and if that were done the Germans might 
well be absolute victors in the colossal strug- 
gle, for no one denies now that Britain is Ger- 
many's chief enemy. 

There are many other factors in the problem ; 



158 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

but in comparison with those I have been 
weighing they are not immediately important. 

The weightiest factor in the whole problem 
is the incredible supine weakness of Great Brit- 
ain. No one can doubt that if she had put her 
hand in her pocket she could at least have in- 
sured the neutrality of Turkey. It is admitted 
now that if she had offered sufficient monetary 
inducements to her own population she could 
by this time have thrown a million of men into 
France or, better still, into Ostend. 

Even now, mid-April, 1915, the English 
forces are only defending less than 40 miles of 
the 540 miles of battle-line flung across France. 

The conditions England has offered to her 
volunteers and especially to the widows and or- 
phans of the men who may be killed in fighting 
for her are disgracefully mean and paltry. 
What man will feel inclined to fight when he 
knows that if he is killed his widow will only 
get $2 a week or so to live upon? And it is only 
lately that as much as this has been offered. 
Under the circumstances it says a great deal for 
the fighting spirit of the Briton that over two 
millions of men have offered their services. 

But what must be thought of the British 
Government, which at the last push of fate sac- 
rifices victory to pick-thank meanness? Eng- 
lish Ministers are still intent on waging war 
"on the cheap" when, had they shown the spirit 
and resolution of Cromwell or even of Chat- 
ham, they might have already decided the con- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 159 

flict. Chatham had given them the lead, but 
they seem incapable o£ even profiting by his 
example. 

They began the war with all the chances in 
their favor, all the powers. Already their lack 
of insight and will has made the issue of the 
struggle doubtful. A few months more of their 
characteristic waiting upon fortune and it will 
be too late. Will they "wake up" in time? 

The triumvirate of Asquith, Winston 
Churchill and Kitchener is on trial ; so far they 
have done about as little as men could do and 
have brought the world to wonder at their pov- 
erty of invention. They deserve the bitter gibe 
I heard from an American the other day : "The 
Germans will fight to the last German, the Bel- 
gians to the last Belgian, and the Britons to the 
last — Frenchman." 

Sir Edward Grey, on the other hand, has 
shown himself the cleverest diplomatist in Eu- 
rope; at the beginning of the war he won the 
sympathy of all neutral peoples by the horror 
he expressed at the violation of Belgian neu- 
trality by the Germans; he almost persuaded 
America that Britain was fighting for little Bel- 
gium, outraged and overwhelmed by German 
hordes. Now Americans are beginning to real- 
ize that England wanted Germany's trade and 
was jealous of her astounding growth in indus- 
try, commerce and naval power. Sir Edward 
Grey has done splendidly for his country all 
through, and if the contest were to be decided 



i6o ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

by diplomatic cunning and verbal skill, it 
wouldn't be difficult to select the winner. 

Even now if England proposed to Italy to 
defray all the money cost of her participation in 
the war with the additional bribe of the Tren- 
tino and Trieste in case of success it is as cer- 
tain as anything can be that Italy would take 
the bait, and at once the position of Germany 
and Austria would be greatly worsened. By 
spending two or three hundred millions of 
pounds in this way England would be saving 
money in the long run; but she still hesitates 
and fumbles. 

Nobody who knows them expects much from 
Asquith, Winston Churchill or Kitchener. As- 
quith is a mild and well meaning lawyer person 
v/ith a superb scholar's memory and excellent 
work-a-day intelligence, absolutely unoriginal, 
though endowed with a very notable gift of 
sonorous phrases. He loves a good dinner and 
a good bottle of wine and follows the French 
proverb which says that after forty one ought 
to keep the cellar door open. 

Winston Churchill is an arriviste, as the 
French would say, of great energy and quick- 
ness of mind and of quite extraordinary cour- 
age, but he knows no language save his own, is 
without reading or genius, and cannot be ex- 
pected to inaugurate a new policy. Kitch- 
ener is far past his best and has always, in my 
opinion, found it easier to look wise than to 
act or talk wisely. Still Grey is there, and he 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? i6i 

is a considerable person, with remarkable force 
and elevation of character and some power of 
independent thought. 

He has the head of a Roman General, cut as 
sharply as a cameo, and is singularly free of 
weakness. A courteous, reserved gentleman, 
half athlete, half thinker, he is very good in- 
deed at whatever he undertakes. He has been 
a champion at tennis and keeps himself always 
in the pink of condition. As a young man he 
was very prudent, cautious even; as he grows 
older he grows bolder, and that's an excellent 
sign. If England does anything remarkable in 
this crisis, the initiative will probably come 
from Sir Edward Grey. 

But while admitting that the British have 
seemingly the better cards and should win if 
they knew how to play them, I am far from 
sure that they will win, or rather I am con- 
vinced that the Germans will make an advan- 
tageous draw of it, if indeed they do not win 
outright. 

For their superiority in organization and in 
fighting power is only a symbol of their supe- 
riority in morale and national enthusiasm. 

Toward the middle of September there was 
an impassioned call for volunteers put forth by 
the War Office in Great Britain; about one 
hundred thousand men responded to the appeal 
in two weeks, then the enlisting fell off, as it 
came to be understood how poor the conditions 
were. When the news of this volunteering 



i62 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

reached Germany over a million men offered 
themselves as volunteers within three days, 
though their services were not asked for by the 
Government and indeed had to be refused. 

It would be impossible to exaggerate the na- 
tional spirit and enthusiasm of the Germans in 
this crisis. That docile and disciplined people 
showed itself capable of extraordinary and pas- 
sionate devotion in 1814, but in 191 4 their pa- 
triotism has become a religious fervor and the 
world in arms would not shock them. It is ri- 
diculous to talk of militarism in this connec- 
tion. The whole German people are with the 
Kaiser in this war and solemnly resolved to 
bring it to a great issue. 

If there is not enough flour, then they will 
cut down their consumption of bread; if there 
is not enough copper or nitrate or rubber, their 
chemists go to work and produce satisfactory 
substitutes: no one thinks of surrender, or of 
any outcome but an honorable peace. All Ger- 
mans regard this as a defensive war and are 
prepared to prove their contention. 

If France wants peace, they say, France can 
have it; we will give them back the French 
land we hold; in the same way, if Russia sees 
there is no hope of winning and desires peace, 
we will hand back to them that part of Russian 
Poland which we occupy at present. Some- 
thing we must have for our successes and im- 
mense self-sacrifice — Antwerp if Herr Ballin or 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 163 

Dr. Dernberg is to be trusted, — Antwerp or a 
certain right of way through Belgium, and, 
above all, the neutrality of the seas. 

The question is : Will the Allies fight to the 
last rather than accept some such solution of 
the problem? Of course, they all declare they 
will, and they will probably stick to their re- 
solve till they see they cannot hope to succeed. 
Then they will quickly become reasonable and 
accept the inevitable. 

For already the weakness inherent in all al- 
lied forces has shown itself distinctly. No one 
now doubts the recent statement of the "Koel- 
nische Zeitung" that France would have been 
willing to make peace early in September on 
the basis of the status quo ante. England, it is 
said, prevented this by declaring that in that 
case she would treat France as an enemy, and 
thus forcecj her to accept the agreement that 
none of the Allies would make peace sepa- 
rately. 

But such agreements are hardly more than 
"scraps of paper." As soon as Russia sees that 
it is her cue to make peace she'll make it with- 
out caring greatly whether it suits France or 
England. England, of course, wants a fight to 
a finish, for so alone can she hope to gain Ger- 
many's trade and commerce, but, compara- 
tively speaking, England is not suffering ; it is 
her allies who are bearing the burden of the 
war. It may be assumed that if Germany can 



i64 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

keep her hold of France and Russian Poland, 
peace will be welcomed by one or both of these 
countries before 191 5 is done with. 

If on the other hand, Russia overruns Hun- 
gary, or the Italians join in the attack and force 
Austria to make peace, still Germany will have 
to be reckoned with and once within her own 
frontiers she would be, I believe, unbeatable. 

If Germany had a diplomatist like Sir Ed- 
ward Grey she would try to finish off the war in 
a month by offering Russia certain advantages 
in the Balkans. After all why should Germany 
or even Austria object to the Russian bear get- 
ting Constantinople? All that dog-in-the-man- 
ger business is unworthy of a great people. 
Why should German lives be sacrificed to pre- 
vent Russia getting a good port? 

Now is the opportunity for the Kaiser to 
prove himself a master of diplomacy. The Ger- 
man jealousy of the Slav and the Slav hatred of 
the German are alike pitiable ; why not make an 
end of these tribal disputes? And if Germany 
got Russia to agree to peace conditions France 
could easily be pacified. France feels that she 
has burned her paws badly getting the chest- 
nuts out of the fire for Great Britain. She had 
no conception of the strength of Germany and 
would be willing to make peace at once on con- 
dition of getting her own territory back and 
perhaps the distinctively French communes in 
Alsace-Lorraine for the sake of vainglory, and 
Germany can afford to be generous in this mat- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY-^? 165 

ter if she gets trade-free routes through Bel- 
gium, and the neutrality of the seas is guar- 
anteed, and who would deny her this solatium? 
No one but England, and England without 
allies would be powerless. 

At any rate there are the cards. Either side 
may win and end the devilish deadlock; who 
willbe wise first? Germany or England ? Ger- 
many by offering peace to Russia and France? 
Or England by uniting them and Italy as well 
in a new gigantic effort to smash and ruin 
Germany, her great commercial rival? 

Some say that if Germany seems likely to 
triumph the United States will take a hand in 
the game; but that to me is simply incredible. 
It would not only be against her plain self-in- 
terest but also against the interests of hu- 
manity. Even now America is mainly respon- 
sible for the continuance of the war. If the 
United States refused to supply any of the com- 
batants with the munitions of war, the war 
would come to an end in a month. President 
Wilson thought it his duty to forbid the export 
of arms and munitions to Mexico, a similar or- 
der now applied to all the warring peoples, 
would bring about peace in double quick time. 
The Pope seems to expect such an order from 
him ; but American public opinion is so wedded 
to the Allies that it would almost need a super- 
man to brave it. 

One result is most probable — a draw. When 
near exhaustion the warring powers may con- 



i66 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

sent to lay down their arms on a return to the 
status quo ante. This outcome would be dread- 
fully unsatisfactory to every one ; but anything 
is better than to continue the useless butchery 
and waste of such a war. 

CHAPTER X 

The "Soul of Goodness in Things Evil" 

With that sweet-thoughted wisdom which 
distinguished his mature work Shakespeare 
recognized that there is always "some soul of 
goodness in things evil"; but if it is exceed- 
ingly difficult to foretell who will win in this 
world struggle, it is almost impossible to fore- 
cast the spiritual outcome of it. One can speak 
perhaps with a little confidence in generalities ; 
but as soon as one tries to be concrete and 
definite, doubts swarm and thought is dis- 
tracted. Still, one thing is certain : world shak- 
ing events always embody moral lessons ; war 
is a great exposer of shams and revealer of vir- 
tues. A desperate struggle is sure to set real 
values in high relief. 

What then are the chief values already dis- 
covered and what the pretences? The first 
value which has hitherto been underrated is the 
value of the British command of the sea. We 
all esteemed it highly when we thought about 
it at all, but it wasn't sufficiently present to our 
minds as a unique force, a singular advantage. 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 167 

There is much more sea than land on this earth 
of ours, and England, not content with pos- 
sessing more than half the temperate zone, pos- 
sesses also, or at least rules, all the seas. 
Sooner or later that condition of things must 
cease ; sooner or later the seas and oceans like 
the fields of air must be neutralized in the in- 
terests of all nations and policed by all peo- 
ples in some rough proportion to population 
and power. This, it seems to me, should be the 
first ethical result of the present contest. 

It may take years or even decades to bring 
the ideal to fulfilment ; but this war has shown 
that when one Power holds the hegemony of 
the seas the rights of all neutrals are injured 
and neutral trade placed at the most serious 
disadvantage. It is the old story of the strong 
despot dethroned by the combination of the 
many weak. 

All virtues, all powers, one sees, will be set 
in higher relief. Before the war no one imag- 
ined that Germany would not only gain an 
enormous initial advantage, but would hold it 
month after month, and when more than eight 
months had passed would still be warring in 
the enemies' countries. 

The reputation of Germany has already 
grown out of all calculation. For a century or 
more to come it will probably be regarded as 
the model State and its institutions will be imi- 
tated, its institutions copied, all the forms of it 
aped and assimilated while the informing spirit 



i68 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

of it may pass almost unappreciated. The suc- 
cess of Germany is calculated to stereotype and 
fossilize German institutions and to relax rather 
than to quicken the inspiring genius. When 
we prove ourselves superior to our neighbors 
it is only natural that we should rest on accom- 
plishment and seek to enjoy the fruits of our 
labors. Besides, German success in war is sure 
to be followed by an extraordinary growth of 
German industry and commerce. This fact is 
not sufficiently appreciated even in America. 
Suppose peace were concluded to-morrow, in- 
ternational and especially American capital 
would flow to Germany where it would be sure 
of highest returns rather than to Great Britain 
where the returns have for long been small. 
German wealth would grow in the night, and 
nothing weakens moral fibre and mental effort 
so much as material prosperity. Let us con- 
sider then how Germany is likely to suffer 
from this slackening of "the will to surpass.". 
Germany is a curious amalgam of a hierar- 
chy framed and fitted for war grafted on demo- 
cratic institutions and inspired in civil life by 
an intensely democratic spirit of equality and 
willingness to work — a sort of despotism with 
strong socialistic tendencies. There can be no 
doubt that it is the despotic side which has 
been strengthened by the war so far, just as the 
nominal socialism has been weakened. And 
this process is certain to continue and increase 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 169 

even if Germany holds but her own in the war 
and makes a draw of it. 

National vanity will come into play and the 
German Kiplings and Newbolts will all declare 
that no nation ever faced so formidable a com- 
bination of enemies without flinching. German 
valor and German virtue will be lauded to the 
skies ; in fact, everything German will have an 
added value and take on a new lustre. The 
first consequences are already showing them- 
selves ; the authority of the Hohenzollerns will 
be affirmed ; the power of the military caste in- 
ordinately strengthened; German socialism 
will become critical rather than revolutionary ; 
the reforming elements will all be weakened; 
German pride will appear to be a merit, and 
for some time the fighting strength of Ger- 
many will be increased. 

If Germany in the result holds a right of way 
through Belgium and all seas are neutralized, 
her oversea commerce and trade will increase 
by leaps and bounds. At once her rivalry with 
England will become the central fact of the new 
time, and a contest with England for trade 
supremacy or even ultimately for South Africa 
as a field of colonization is as certain as any- 
thing can be. 

Who will win in the desperate duel depends 
on the effect of the war on Great Britain, for it 
is surely obvious now to every one that Ger- 
many and England are the real rivals and foes. 



170 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

What Germany ought to do at once is to 
conclude peace with Russia and with France 
and address herself to the real conflict with 
England. She would have done that already 
if her diplomacy had been at all equal to her 
fighting power. Clearly it is now her most 
pressing need. But is it possible? one will ask. 
England has been very clever in binding both 
Russia and France in a treaty not to conclude 
peace separately. What can Germany do to 
untie the allied bond? 

Bismarck would tell her to begin with Rus- 
sia. The Czar admires the Kaiser ; the Roman- 
offs are still more despotic than the Hohenzol- 
lerns; in many respects too the needs of Rus- 
sia and the ambitions of Russia resemble those 
of Germany. Russia wants to get to Constan- 
tinople above all things, as Germany wants to 
keep Antwerp. Germany can give financial aid 
to Russia almost as freely as France has done, 
and if Russia demands territorial aggrandize- 
ment it would pay Germany to give her Galicia 
for the sake of an immediate peace. 

With Russia pacified Germany could deal 
with France at once. She could offer to with- 
draw from French soil and even concede some 
French communes in Lorraine. France could 
not hesitate. She would conclude peace, and 
so Germany would at length come face to face 
with her real enemy. 

Everything will depend then on which Power 
is the stronger. Great Britain or Germany. In 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 171 

my opinion, Germany would win in the strug- 
gle, for England in one respect is woefully 
weak. Thanks to the greed of her land own- 
ing oligarchy, she does not produce one-quar- 
ter enough food to supply her own wants ; this 
is the Achilles heel of England 

Face to face with England alone Germany 
could quickly build a navy or at least subma- 
rines and airships enough to lame English com- 
merce and send up the price of food in Great 
Britain to famine prices. But why do I assume 
that Germany will show more initiative and 
forethought than England? Simply because 
she is showing more now. 

Already, had there been any prevision or or- 
dinary foresight in Great Britain, her statesmen 
would have had at least three submarines 
and airships too for every one owned by Ger- 
mans ; but the Briton is proud to owe as little 
as possible to his brains. Germany has al- 
ready taken measures to protect her food sup- 
plies and Germany's need in this respect is not 
a tenth so pressing as England's need. But 
nothing will ever teach the English oligarchy 
or dissipate their pleasure sodden dream of 
perpetual parasitical enjoyment except defeat 
in war. They have always ^'muddled through" 
somehow or other, and it is easier to go on from 
day to day and from hand to mouth than to 
think and by thinking avoid catastrophe and 
prepare triumph. 

The great trinity of Asquith, Churchill and 



172 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Kitchener may be trusted to muddle sleepily 
along till they are awakened by a sudden ter- 
rifying rise in the price of bread and by the 
growl of revolt from the East End, hunger sup- 
plying courage One-third of England's popu- 
lation is always on the verge of starvation, as 
Booth proved; this is England's desperate 
weakness. Half a dozen wheat-ships captured 
by the Germans or sunk by their submarines 
and England would have to pay at once for the 
callous selfishness of her rich, the corruption of 
her judiciary, the inhuman shortsightedness of 
her politicians. There would either be a social 
revolution in England or she would accept de- 
feat, hand Germany her sea sceptre and sink 
to the level of another Holland. Her noble 
masters might in their hearts prefer this latter 
alternative ; but the English people are a proud 
and struggle loving people ; once "up against it" 
they may be trusted to get rid of their snob- 
bishness, make short work of their parasite 
governors and get down to business. 

The one hope of progress in England is sharp 
defeat in war: "Prosperity," says the French 
thinker, "prosperity reveals vices; adversity, 
virtues." Every one who loves England should 
pray for a bitter lesson. More than a hundred 
years ago now Tom Paine declared that noth- 
ing would civilize England till the blood of her 
children had been shed on their own hearth- 
stones. It needs a defeat in war to wrest the 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 173 

land of England from the lords who stole it and 
give it back to the people. 

And this first reform would pave the way for 
a thousand others, for the democratization of 
the judiciary and inauguration of free speech 
and free criticism, for a national system of edu- 
cation, for modern universities and technical 
schools, for the endowment of chemical and 
physical laboratories, for the satisfaction of 
spiritual even more than material needs. De- 
feat might turn England into a modern state 
and give her a chance of union with her colo- 
nies on a democratic basis and a new lease of 
life as a Confederation of sister states. 

But will this be the outcome, will England 
be defeated? Or will she not get Italy to strike 
in with her and Rumania and Greece and 
slowly hem in and finally crush her great Ger- 
man rival? Even in that case her day of trial 
can only be deferred ; there is no abiding place 
in this world for such an oligarchy as that of 
England. I regard German virtue, that is, Ger- 
man efficiency and German valor, as the high- 
est in the European world to-day ; I do not be- 
lieve that Germany can be beaten by the Allies ; 
but if she be defeated and forced to accept con- 
ditions of peace, she will spring again to power 
quicker than before and will then be unable to 
make any mistake as to her real foe : sooner or 
later Germany and England must fight their 
quarrel out or reach a settlement by agreement. 



174 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

A permanent settlement could easily be 
reached at once by a little common sense. All 
countries, especially England and Germany, 
should consent to at least partial disarmament 
on condition that the seas and fields of air were 
neutralized and excluded from war forever. 
Smaller details present no difficulty ; the French 
communes of Alsace-Lorraine should be given 
back to France and my opinion of German 
idealism is so high that I don't think this would 
be denied if all German colonies were restored. 

It should be easy for England to put her 
house in order without the sharp compulsion of 
defeat and necessity ; but I am convinced there 
is small hope of it. Those who think so don't 
know England, and the many warnings she has 
had. Prophets have been sent to her, such as 
Carlyle and Ruskin ; but England does not even 
listen to their Jeremiads; again and again, as 
in the South African war, she has only man- 
aged to escape defeat at an overwhelming cost ; 
but still she won't stop even to think. She 
alienated the world by her unpropvoked attack 
on the Boers, and France, in order to grab 
Egypt, and Egypt is plainly a source of weak- 
ness to her to-day and not of strength, and 
South Africa she had to restore to the Boers, 
though the silly war had cost her a thousand 
millions of pounds. At length she has a real 
enemy and will either have to fight for her 
lordship of the seas or make a reasonable peace. 

Let us suppose, however, that the Allies ulti- 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 175 

mately win, either through the defection of 
Austria, which seems the most likely cause, or 
through a gradual process of wearing down or 
because of the entrance of fresh Powers into 
the field, such as Italy and Rumania. Let us 
admit the worst — that Germany may have to 
consent to partial dismemberment. Every one 
knows how the English governing classes at 
the beginning of the war talked of giving Al- 
sace and Lorraine back to France; Galicia, it 
was hinted, would be a suitable reward for 
Russia; then monetary compensation would 
have to be provided for Belgium; Heligoland 
would have to go back to Great Britain, with 
most of the German colonies in East Africa, 
and the Kiel Canal would be destroyed or 
handed over to Holland. 

What in such an extravagant case as this 
would be the spiritual outcome of the war? 
What soul of goodness would come to light? 

France would have to be more on the alert 
and better armed than in the past; Belgium 
would have to ally herself closely with France 
for protection ; Russia and England would pal- 
ter on in the old way ; the autocracy in the one 
and the oligarchy in the other would alone be 
satisfied. England would probably adopt con- 
scription, might even take some half measures 
toward increasing her home production of food- 
stuffs, but in the main everything would go on 
as before, and — Germany? What would be- 
come of Germany? 



176 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Slowly but surely Germany would win up 
again; international capital is very acute and 
international capital would flow to her. In ten 
years or in twenty, according to the conditions 
imposed, she would again come to the front 
and challenge her rival. The next time Eng- 
land will not be helped by Russia, France and 
Japan; and by herself she has hardly any 
chance of succeeding, for this reason ; her ablest 
sons all go to India, or in England devote them- 
selves to upholding the oligarchy because of 
the rewards. There is no middle class educa- 
tion in England; hardly any high education of 
any sort ; the mental product is woefully insuf- 
ficient. I always come back to the same re- 
frain : only through defeat or by some miracle 
will England be brought to her senses or 
turned into a modern State. 

There is still another alternative. England 
is now buttressed by her democratic colonies, 
by Canada and Australia and New Zealand, 
who do not realize that their support in war 
prevents the internal forces of reform from 
compelling vital and life giving changes. In 
another twenty or thirty years these colonies 
will be so powerful that Germany may hesitate 
to attack Great Britain; it is possible that the 
daughter States by protecting England may 
preserve her in her present decadent state for 
another century or so — a dishonored and dis- 
honorable old age. 

If they do, so much the worse for her; her 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 177 

gift to humanity has then been given. Nothing 
more can be hoped from her. The pages of her 
history are all written. Sooner or later the 
great Powers, headed by Germany or the 
United States, will take the sceptre of the seas 
from her nerveless hands and neutralize the 
waters as they must soon neutralize the air. 

CHAPTER XI 

Some Effects of the War Upon America 

My friends tell me that I ought to end this 
book with a chapter setting forth the lessons 
that the war holds for Americans, and with 
some attempt at least to calculate what effects 
the war will have on our civilization. It is im- 
possible to play prophet in specific details. 
The prophet should confine himself to general, 
broad results ; but certain results of the war on 
the United States can already be traced, and 
it is safe to infer what will be from that which 
has already taken place. 

The first effect of the war on America was to 
throw thousands of men and women out of 
employment, especially in New York; roughly 
speaking, the percentage of unemployed v/as 
doubled ; yet neither the government at Wash- 
ington nor the State legislature nor the munici- 
pality did anything to remedy this dreadful in- 
justice. A thousand years hence such negli- 
gence will be regarded as criminally stupid. 



178 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

The State that permits it is much like the man 
who allows his hand or foot to be frost-bitten. 

The next result of the war here is the pres- 
ent agitation for a large increase of our army 
and navy. Armament makers and dealers in 
munitions of war are pretty sure to press their 
case as strongly as possible, and while the 
thinker realizes that the result of the war 
should be to induce America to seek peace and 
ensue it more resolutely than ever, the trades 
and professions interested in producing the 
materials of war, are determined to make 
America pacific by providing her with many 
new and sharp teeth. They refuse to believe 
with Shakespeare that "the power to do ill 
deeds, often makes ill deeds done." 

In both respects, in the perfect contempt we 
show for the unemployed and the determina- 
tion to increase our armaments, we seem in- 
tent on imitating the worst faults of Europe. 

Instead of increasing our army and navy and 
so copying Germany in the militarism which 
most Americans dislike, it would be well for us 
to imitate Germany in those departments of 
life in which she has set the world a great ex- 
ample and been most successful. Germany has 
brought into life the ideal of the perfect State, 
the State as an organic whole in which the rich 
and powerful are forced to fulfil all sorts of 
obligations towards the weak and the poor on 
the one hand, and towards the intellectuals on 
the other. The body-politic cannot be healthy, 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 179 

Bismarck saw, unless every individual cell of 
it, is fed and functioning properly. We should 
provide work for our laborers and proper food 
for our poor school children, food being even 
more necessary than teaching. Germany has 
spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year in 
this way, much more than she has spent on her 
army and navy together; and a great part of 
her strength comes from the fact that she has 
taken special care of her weaker citizens. 

On the other side of the social scale, too, 
there are valuable lessons to be learned from 
the older civilization of Germany and France. 
There is scarcely any State or municipal en- 
dowment of science or of art in America. We 
owe most of our growth, according to Darwin- 
ism, to the intellectuals or "sports" of genius. 
It would be to our self-interest, therefore, to 
take care of our intellectuals by founding chem- 
ical and physical laboratories in every city and 
by providing in every large town opera houses 
for music-lovers, theatres for the lovers of 
drama, and art galleries for the lovers of plastic 
art. America to-day is starving the souls as 
well as the bodies of her children. 

It might be advisable in other respects to 
follow the example of Germany. We Ameri- 
cans have been tinkering with the regulation 
of railways ever since Mr. Roosevelt's famous 
dictum that "the highways of the nation must 
be kept open to all upon equal terms." For 
the last fifteen years or so, ever since the Sher- 



i8o ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

man Law of 1890, our politicians have been 
trying to regulate railway rates and competi- 
tion and get rid of the grosser injustices and 
evils of this great monopoly. It is surely plain 
now that all such attempts are absurd. The 
only way to get rid of the evils of privately 
owned railroads is for the State to take over 
the railroads, just as the State or county or 
municipality has already taken over the roads. 
The health of the whole organism depends on 
the motor-nerves being healthy, and the idea 
that the nerves should favor one part of the 
body in preference to another is ludicrously 
absurd. 

One influence has shown itself all over Eu- 
rope in the last twenty years unmistakably. 
With the growth of national consciousness, 
with the quickened sense of our responsibility 
towards our weaker brethren in the State, has 
come an astonishing increase in the religious 
spirit. Everywhere the scepticism of twenty 
years ago is dying out. Even in France there 
is a marked growth in Christian faith and feel- 
ing, a wave of emotion which will certainly 
grow fuller and may at length lead to a revival 
in religion, as there is already apparent on 
every side a second and greater renaissance of 
art. The effect of this second Reformation will 
be in turn an enormous quickening of our sense 
of responsibility to others, and of our concep- 
tion of the need and value of ideal aims. 

On the material side, the war is likely to 



ENGLAND OR GERM.-.v ? igi 

^N X 

bring about changes in America which are eas- 
ily calculated. Before the war the United 
States owed England alone something like four 
thousand millions of dollars. By the end of 
the war she will have paid a good deal of that 
enormous sum in munitions of war and pro- 
visions, in corn and in cotton, all sold at a very 
high price. In other words, the United States 
is clearing herself of debt with great rapidity, 
and is certainly not paying much more than 
sixty cents for every dollar borrowed. This 
must lead to an increase of wealth in America ; 
but those who think that American trade will 
therefore experience a vast increase of pros- 
perity after the war, are reckoning without 
their host. The war has inflated prices in many 
departments of industry in America, and this 
inflation of prices is contagious. Prices in 
America after the war will rule high. On the 
other hand, European countries having lost 
half or more than half of their savings, will feel 
poor and be poor; consequently, prices there 
will rule very low. European countries will 
export goods heavily to the only market open 
to them which will have gold to give — namely 
America. Accordingly, the trade of America 
after the war will have to meet the severe com- 
petition of cheap European products. 

Now that I am come to the end of this book 
I am full of apprehension. I can scarcely lay 
down the pen for anxious searching of soul. 
Controversy is seldom literature: war is the 



i82 EN01.AND OR GERMANY—? 

worst subject for the artist. It provides shad- 
ows only — sadness, misery and desolation — 
pathos enough for anything, but few high 
lights which are just as necessary to make a 
living picture. There is not love enough or 
joy enough or laughter enough in war to bal- 
ance the gloom. 

Truth, however, has its own appeal, but it is 
exceedingly difficult to find an expression 
worthy of that austere divinity. The words 
we use are like little pieces of colored glass: 
it is almost impossible to arrange them so as 
to render the white light of truth in its perfect 
purity. At the worst, however, one can follow 
Othello's counsel : "Nothing extenuate nor set 
down ought in malice." This is not a very high 
standard. The artist should do more than this ; 
he should find a way of expressing Othello's 
soul, the flame of courage and impersonal de- 
votion in him who was "great of heart." 

Now have I done this? Have I shown the 
souls of Germany and England? As regards 
Germany, I have certainly done my best, but I 
am conscious of not having done full justice to 
England. What then is the soul of England 
to-day? What is she really doing? What is 
her gift to the world in this last half century? 

The richest men in the world are constantly 
drifting to London. The Astors and Vander- 
bilts, the Beits and Wernhers and Speyers all 
flock thither. The fact is, life is more pleasant 
to the rich in England than anywhere else on 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 183 

earth. A German of high rank told me the 
other day that he regarded life in an English 
country house as nearer perfection than any 
other life. Now what truth is there in this 
praise? 

Englishmen of the best class, it is admitted, 
dress better than other men and among them- 
selves show the most charming manners, un- 
affected, simple, familiar. The food and drink, 
too, are better in England than they are any- 
where else. It is often said that the cooking 
in England is bad. That is true. The cooks 
are generally bad when they are not French; 
but the English have the highest ideal of cook- 
ing in the world. They have the aristocratic 
ideal which is that every article of food should 
preserve its own distinctive flavor. If you 
would taste a potato properly, you must have 
it simply boiled in its skin. Game should be 
lightly roasted before a fire if you would enjoy 
its full savour. A French cook will serve you 
potatoes in fifty different ways : a plain boiled 
potato is the only sort which he will not set on 
your table. Or he will give you a "perdreau 
aux choux" where the delicate flavor of the 
partridge is utterly lost in the coarse, strong 
flavor of the cabbage. The French idea of 
cooking is to obliterate all distinctions with a 
democratic sauce, so that you don't know what 
you are eating — fish or flesh or red herring. 
In England, when you have the English ideal 
of cooking carried out by French cooks, you 



i84 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

get as near perfection as is possible in UAs 
faulty world. 

Englishmen, too, are justified in boasting 
that since they began to drink champagne, they 
have taught Frenchmen what the best cham- 
pagne is. Their taste has. selected the natural 
champagne, the champagne not sweetened 
with added sugar nor loaded with added spirit, 
but left entirely natural or pure — brut, as it is 
labelled. They have also discovered certain 
years in which this or that or the other brand 
of Champagne is at its best. They establish 
the price of the best champagne and practically 
drink all of it. 

They have exercised much the same influence 
on cigars and tobacco. It was the English 
who selected Turkish and Egyptian tobacco 
for cigarettes and the best Cuban tobacco for 
cigars. America, too, takes a great many ci- 
gars from Havana, but Americans seldom study 
the best years for tobacco as the English study 
it. In the best years, the finest growths of to- 
bacco are nearly all taken by England. 

It is the simple truth to say that the upper 
classes have made life in England the most 
agreeable in the world. Moreover, the Eng- 
lish love physical beauty more than other na- 
tions : they love it in dogs and cattle and horses, 
as well as in men and women — everywhere; 
but they are not so concerned with the beauty 
of the spirit. 

In fine, the average sensual man who is rich 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 185 

finds England a sort of paradise. All the con- 
ditions of life are more pleasant there than 
elsewhere and the service is easily the best on 
earth. But when one has said this one has 
said nearly all that can be said in favor of 
modern England. 

The perfection of physical comfort prevents 
the ordinary person from feeling how starved 
is the soul. An English country house set in 
an English park on a summer day would be 
almost another Eden were it not for the dire 
poverty in the village just beyond the park 
gates and the servility and degradation of the 
laboring-class. There is a story of how a man 
once lived without a shadow and became ab- 
solutely miserable because of his peculiarity. 
For many a year now England has lived with- 
out a soul, and no one except here and there a 
Carlyle, has even noticed the loss. There are 
no ideals in England, no enthusiasm, no high 
appreciation of art or literature, no impersonal 
striving. There is absolute veneration for the 
material standard of value and whoever would 
lower it, is anathema; but on the other hand, 
there is nothing but contempt for the spiritual 
standard of value and it is debased on all sides 
without protest ; yet this degradation of values 
was once known as the sin that would never 
be forgiven. The Alfred Austins and Bridges 
are preferred in England before the Brownings 
and Swinburnes and Yeatses. The Johns and 
Simes and Prides are almost ignored ; while the 



i86 ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 

Astors and Norfolks are honored beyond all 
measure. The Davidsons and Middletons are 
fain to kill themselves. There is no life of 
the spirit, no national opera, no national thea- 
tre : no passionate intellectual striving ; no pro- 
vision for those who steer humanity; and the 
soul shrinks into itself and dwines and dies, 
and neither rich viands nor vintage wines nor 
scented cigars can call it back to life. 

Will this war force England to mend her 
ways and free the spirit? Who shall say? 
Will she get rid of her oligarchy and her aris- 
tocratic judges ? Will she nationalize her land 
and her railways and free herself of the disease 
of poverty that is sapping her strength? Will 
she extend and heighten her intellectual life; 
or will she continue to be as Wordsworth said : 
"a fen of stagnant waters" ? If so, why should 
she hold the sceptre or presume to steer hu- 
manity? 

For myself I can only say that I feel towards 
her in this strife as an American. It is more 
than thirty years now since I abjured my alle- 
giance to her and her monarch, and was admit- 
ted to the American Bar in Lawrence, Kansas. 
I owe Germany and France more of my intel- 
lectual life than I owe England ; but because I 
have lived a good deal in England without fall- 
ing over head and ears in love with her, Lord 
Northcliffe and his henchmen in the press talk 
of me as a "traitor." Ever since the iniquitous 
South African war I have felt that England's 



ENGLAND OR GERMANY—? 187 

success and England's material prosperity tak- 
en together with her low spiritual ideal consti- 
tute the gravest danger to the cause of civili- 
zation in the world! lago is the patron saint 
of England, and his motto : "Put money in your 
purse," the one commandment generally 
obeyed. 

The other day I came across a statement of 
the American author, David Graham Phillips, 
with which I find myself in entire agreement. 
He wrote : 

"We inherited a little (of our civilization) 
from France; but unfortunately, more from 
England. I think the strongest desire I have 
is to see my country shake off the English in- 
fluence — the self-righteousness, the snobbish- 
ness. . . . They put snobbishness into their 
church service and create a snob-god who calls 
some Englishmen to be lords, and others to be 
servants. ... In New York, in one class with 
which my business compels me to have much 
to do, the craze for imitating England is ram- 
pant. It is absurd how they try to erect snob- 
bishness into a virtue." 

The End 



BY 
FRANK HARRIS 

Elder Conklin and Other Stories 

MONTES THE MaTADOR 

Unpath'd Waters 
The Veils of Isis 



The Bomb 
Great Days 



The Man Shakespeare 
The Women of Shakespeare 
Shakespeare and His Love (Play) 



Contemporary Portraits 



Love in Youth (in Press) 

Oscar Wilde : His Life and Confessions 

Mr. and Mrs. Daventry (Drama) 



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